>>>The professionals to whom I refer work for MICROSOFT SOLUTION PROVIDERS as well as Merrill Lynch in the Jacksonville, FL, area. If they are not professionals, where does that leave you?
>>>
>>>J. Mendenhall
>>Well John,
>>If you think members of UT are not professionals (I sure think they're), I also know a few names who are not members of UT (at least didn't see a message from them), Ken Levy, Tamar E. Granor, Ted Roche, Lisa Slater... I think they're professionals. Also there are many "MS Solution providers" using FP. Why not ask them ?
>>Cetin
>
>Note the original paragraph with which Mr. Pikman took issue:
>*
>I see why most other developers do not respect VFP as a development tool, certainly not as a product for building robust applications. In fact, most professionals in Northeast Florida ask, "Why would you want to use FoxPro?" I look forward to a response from the hard core VFP developers out there...
>*
>Not once in the original program did I say that members of UT or the Fox community were not professional. However, Mr. Pikman took the opportunity to imply, or rather state, that I must not be a professional. Mr. Pikman took my message out of context. He deserved a rebuttal, and, no, I am not impressed that he is a MCP.
>
>Also, when I seek the advice of consultants in Florida, they react very much the way that I stated. They usually push the C/S approach with VB as the front end. If I am going to continue to use Fox, I felt I needed to address two issues, only two, which I find limiting. Yes, the DBC could be an easy work around and I know someone has written an app to assist in moving an DBC from directory to another. That only leaves the forms...
>
>If you follow the thread, some members, like Mr. Booth and Mr. Fitzgerald, replied thoughtfully to my post with some suggestions.
>
>Again, I never once said FoxPro developers were not professional. Too many people inferred that from my post and have found it convenient to lash out at me. Remember, I am a manager responsible for a major rewrite. I have not found any positive input from developers in Northeast Florida; thus, I have sought out UT. And after the continuing input of MSP's and MS certified professionals who suggest not using Fox, I deserve the opportunity to vent...
>
>J. Mendenhall
Hi J,
First of all my English is not so good. Sorry for that. I think I was the first one that replied your original message. There while trying to answer paragraph by paragraph, I came to the last paragraph and realized rather than seeking help you were somewhat touching the feelings of FP community about a product that they have been using for years. If I understood wrong forgive me.
I sure know no one would dare to suspect about profession of others if s/he really is better than all of them. So I didn't care about "professionals" much.
In the case of Mr.Pikman, believe me, if you ever gonna use VFP, he is one of the invaluable resources and I thank internet that I have opportunity to talk to him and all other UT members as well. Not only an MCP but I wonder why he is not an MVP also (of course there are many other here in UT that could be MVP too). I learn a lot from all them.
Yes there some limitation in VFP, as there is in all languages. Concentrating on only two subjects, form loading speed and DBC versality, I think you are missing the real power. Besides there could be many ways to slow down form loading in any language. DBC is an addition with VFP. Although there are still some limitations, benefits are a lot. Now I find it hard to work with FP 2.x and earlier (for DBC comparison I mean). For c/s frontend using VB is another solution of course. Here on UT, including me, would say VFP would outperform the VB and one day you'll do your investment again to build it up in VFP. This may never be true and you could do a good frontend to a seamlessly working c/s app. Who knows. In my opinion the best language is the one you know well + works like a champ for you. For a small dataset it wouldn't matter even if you use dBase III.
I'm also a manager, chief programmer and responsible for a few LAN and a WAN. I have long story up to the point deciding to use FP. There are a lot of discussions comparing products, not just for DBMS, also for OS. I think you should decide by really using as much as you can. The decision you made might be wrong but as they say "the worst decision is no decision". Of course you could mistake one for just you saw form loading is slow. For one of our projects, there were nearly no data handling and decided to use Delphi. After we finished, we wrote another in VFP, for Delphi version was extremely slow in form loading !. Surprise ? No surprise here. I was quite familiar with VFP aspects and knew how it would perform better. If I knew Delphi as much as I do VFP, I think it could be better. Using just wizards and tools just shorten the development time and apps built using them are generally rewritten from scratch. They are for beginners I think. But of course there is one another point why I use VFP. VFP (actually FP including older versions) has an open architecture. You can extend many things including wizard and builders so they could work the way you want. It has a very fast data retrieveal, c/s capabilities and so on. Now I nearly do most of the things (including lowlevel) in VFP. For your two limitations, DBC is not one to count on so left only with form loading. Form loading is not limited by VFP in all its aspects. OS has some role in it, so in next version of OS (Win98, NT 5.0 etc) it could be faster than ever. Also using pageframes with different techniques keep loading shorter etc. Then only data retrieveal would be the real performance issue.
Read the articles in KB comparing some of c/s frontends. All have pros and cons.
Last, if you request help here, do it in a polite way. You'll be surprised by the folks' eagerness to help you. I hope to see you as a member forever and say "wellcome to UT".
Have a nice day
Cetin