Rich,


>Thank you for the great overview of the VFP Team! I've also been using Fox day and night since 1986 along with a few side languages for low-level stuff and still see a very long future for product usage in many, many markets even not associated with .NET. I don't see Windows XP going away too soon and still have several developer friends shipping and selling DOS Fox Apps even today. They are being ported to VFP. But for small to medium size businesses requiring database business solutions, it is the fastest RAD tool on the market. Not every small to medium sized business wants there internal data out on the internet. Especially, in the medical community due to privacy issues. This is were I see many more niche applications that can be quickly created and made available to a much larger market. Sure, there is a lot of large corporations in the world that need large high end databases. But I believe that there are a lot more small to medium sized size business entities than those large
>corporations to market your services to.

Thank you.

>
>I can appreciate the many more people that are behind the scenes at the VFP Team from a visit I made several years ago while driving through Redmond and calling tech support on my cell phone several times until I reached a Redmond support tech who then asked to give me directions to there campus so I could run through some issues with them concerning VFP 5.0 issues shortly after it was released. Probably the thing I remember most was all of the coolers for caffeinated soda in the building. I didn't get to meet the development team, but it was a good visit being able to converse with the support team in person and try to resolve issues with the product.

Thank you.

>
>I realize there were several people at the Essential Fox conference showing great concern over the showing of the VFPDotNet Toolkit and thinking that Ken was trying to get us to switch now. I even mentioned it to Ken at the conference what I had heard from several others that night and Ken clarified there, as he has done here that it was just another great way to get exposure for VFP to other development communities as to some of the built in functionality that VFP has had for a long time. I also went to Kamal's session on the toolkit and it all started out as just a way to play around with the other languages and see what they could do. I know when writing in Delphi and C/C++ there are tons of functions I always end up having to hand code for use there that have been around for years in VFP. So why not do something useful for the community if you do end up needing to use some other languages. Didn't you wish you could always switch to another language so you could reproduce the functions you take for granted every day in VFP. If you write game software then VFP probably isn't near as good as VB or Delphi. But if you want to quickly generate robust multi-user applications without having to rely upon add on data sources then VFP's the tool of choice. I agree with Ken that ASP.NET and learning C# or VB.NET to build ASP.NET apps for remote web based access is important.

Exactly. Thank you!

>The DOT COM fever has subsided and the hype that everything will be on the web just doesn't hold up for small businesses who rely upon their back office software for making their money and not a flashy web front end and who also can't afford to invest in the monthly overhead of bandwidth and secure servers and firewalls, etc. Some business models can become more efficient with some of their data available on the web but not all of it. My biggest problem with thin client is also the lack of a robust UI. It's extremely difficult to create drag and drop applications in a web based form where you could drop a part number onto an order form in another window or a customer onto an order, etc. Or when launching multiple windows with different patients displayed at the same time because you were entering some patient data, while another one called requesting some information on their account, while another walks in the door and needs to have their information pulled up quickly as well. Browser based is just too painful when you're used to that kind of flexibility.

Yup. Thank you. <s>

>
>I don't know the trick to selling more VFP to bring in more money for the VFP team. But one way of getting a lot more exposure might be in promoting VFP to schools and students more heavily, like the way Apple did in the early days by practically giving away their computers to the schools. Because when the kids came home from school and told their parents what kind of computer they were using at school they would say APPLE. So, what did the parents purchase for the home then, another Apple. Now VFP isn't going to have the same appeal as an Apple computer, but I believe the language, syntax and object model is very easy to learn compared to C#, C++ or the "&" and "_" characters used in VB. What's with that? For students wanting to learn a programming language, VFP is fairly easy. Now, you still must be able to analyze and model business processes in order to develop that application as well. So, when my son turns 3 I'll have to help him create a database for tracking all of his toys with a drag and drop interface so he can produce print outs for his little sister so they don't fight over their toys! And since they'll be using VFP, if we had more than 3 or 4 kids the toy database won't start slowing down on them like it does in Access! Now I guess if they have to start sharing their toys with the neighborhood kids we'll have to start teaching them about web services so they can exchange toy databases using XML!

LOL Thank you. <g>

>
>I really do hate seeing all the arguments on the UT about what is going on.

Bravo! Thank you!

> I just want to see a good solid development tool keep getting improved and make it much more appealing to the development community. My clients rarely ask me what I use to develop their applications in. They just like that they go fast and I can make changes and add ons quickly to meet their needs. There are always better tools for the job than others. Just as I have learned the hard way. You can write a clone of Outlook in pure VFP code. But it won't run as fast do to the way it handles graphics objects and containership of hundreds of objects. But then, Delphi doesn't provide a native database with native database functions like VFP does either. So choose the tools you need to build the best product you can as effieciently as possible. I know that VFP 7 has greatly improved my productivity as well as other local developers thanks to Intellisense alone, especially when accessing ActiveX controls not to mention a more stable product overall. I think anyone would quickly realize the time savings in a week or two worth of work to pay for the upgrade cost alone. Now if you are getting paid an an unlimited budget by the hour then you may want to stick to VFP 6 so you can spend more billable time working around issues and looking up command syntax in the help file.

Yes! Thank you...

>
>There's nothing like a late night dissertation to help get your creativity juices flowing! :-) I am glad to see a high profile person like Ken in his position at MS on OUR TEAM! Maybe, Ken could in his spare time code a few nifty apps for Bill G in VFP so Bill could better track his assets might help increase VFPs exposure as well.
>
>Maybe call it GENMONEY-X!!

*ROF'L!*

Rich, it is a delight to see such a nice message. Thanks again.