Keep in mind that there is a lot of business out there selling Delphi native and third party vcls. That would be tools for Delphi but comes up on searches for languages, dev tools, etc.

tracy

>Hi all,
>
>With a reference to the "VFP/SQL or VB/SQL or Net? To Change or Not to Change" thread, yesterday I thought of coming up with “some” survey myself. Today the idea seems not original anymore, since Malcom Jones (message #690191) proposed the similar.
>
>I must emhasize that my survey does not say anything according the absolute figures presented, and that it is about the relativeness only.
>
>I’m sure the list of tools I examined is not complete, but they can be added easily. Just name them, and I will ad them.
>
>Please note that this Google search obviously comes up with unrelated stuff just as well, but I thought that would count for all tools. So, in the range of the big numbers it may say something.
>
>If you have any ideas on improving the survey, please let me know.
>BTW, we could have many more of these kind of surveys, which I can make available to you easily. You even van do it yourself at our website.
>
>If you’re interested, go to the Survey.
>
>Though personally I don’t draw conclusions myself at the website, here is some I can tell (all rather dangerous, but anyways) :
>
>

When tools like Java are not counted, it looks like instances providing development services are the most about Visual Basic and C++. VFP and Delphi come next and are about equal.
>
>

Instances who provide products are not about VFP at all. Delphi outruns about all, but with the remark that the "old" tools (Fortran etc.) score stangely high.
>One remark on this (and all the searches) : a tool (or product) can be subject to expressed errors on forums, which were counted here too; I dug some more explicitly into this (e.g. searching for FoxPro and Error or FoxPro and Weird (etc.), and it looks like FoxPro scores very low on this (i.e. few errors) after relating all to the total entries found (Index column). BTW, the UT forum is not searched by Google ...
>Further sidenote : obviously we must look at the objective of the tool, and IMO VFP isn’t just for the smaller applications (compare Java-like applications outscoring all by far).
>
>

Supposed the developing service compared with the products offered, really say something, we might say that there is some marketing perspective here. Looking at the www pages, "we" just seem not to express our VFP products. Just compare FoxPro and Delphi being equal in the development service, and see the products of FoxPro being 1/5 only compared to Delphi. Look at Visual Basic too, which seems to be used by a lot of individuals offering their snap-in solutions, never resulting in real products ...
>
>

VFP is referred to as a "tool" opposed to "language" in around 1/3 of cases; With Delphi this is over 1/2 of cases (what’s better ?). Appearantly, C# is more looked at as a language too. Please note again that these kind of conclusions are dangerous, but that somewhere their is truth in it just as well (compare Algol, Lisp, Fortran, Prolog, but hmmm, also look at Cobol, Simula, RPG). BTW, the current RPG seems much more modern than I’d guessed.
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The row "(FoxPro Dos)" is faked, and comprised of a subtraction from FoxPro (containing all) and Visual FoxPro. It might tell that around 16 % of us is using FPD only.
>BTW, not being a math expert, it seems not to be allowed to perform this subtraction. Hence, it should not be possible that by means of this subtraction All History shows fewer than Last Year. Please let me no what the trick is here.
>
>

The Index column shows that Delphi outscores FoxPro at an index of 1.56. I’d say that’s not alarming. However, Delphi is newer than FoxPro. BTW, it is therefore better to compare Delphi with VFP, which already comes up with a factor of around 2.
>
>Note : google.com give different results from e.g. google.nl (!!? this has to do with caches ?).
>
>Another sidenote :
>I tried to search for companies switching from FoxPro to something else, and the other way around. The results (with btw hard to find proper search words) are too few to draw conclusions, but anyway came up with the result that people do switch from something to FoxPro (VFP), but never do it the other way around. And I must say, when examining this, some strange thing came to my mind that a switch from FoxPro (VFP) to something never would be applicable (because of the possibilities / applications from VFP). Hence, when it is stated that people would move from VFP to Delphi, I find that (now) hard to believe.
>It is therefore my perception that the Deplhi choices are first choices, or anyway are about choices for a specific application. This complies with what we here hoften : "we use both".
>
>So far for now.
>Any input to improve this (interpretation) is highly appreciated.

.·*´¨)
.·`TCH
(..·*

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