Evolution of FoxPro

When the only language I knew was FORTRAN, I hit a wall with matrix algebra, the old IBM 1620 could not solve my fomulae in a reasonable amount of time -- so I learned SPS ( the assembly language for the 1620 ). A couple years later, I found I could program IBM's 14xx series of computers since the AUTOCODER for those machines was virtually identical to the SPS for the 16xx.

Later, I went through IBM 360 Assembler, COBOL ( many versions ), RPG, PL/1, SPL ( for HP machines ), xbase ( at least 4 different versions, only FOX has survived in my repetoire ), Delphi, Power Builder, VB ( several versions ), C ( and its children including the .NET's C# ).

I personally feel that Foxpro has a future, and will continue to evolve:

1) Legacy Code -- of all the languages listed above, only COBOL comes close to VFP's ongoing support for existing language features. This is important both for the maintenance of existing systems, but also for any conversion efforts.

2) RAD -- the Holy Grail -- given the personal experience level I can at the least prototype ( formally called pseudo code -- which was non-functional ) an app and get the overview. Before the DBC graphical display in VFP, I used Power Builder to graphically express schemas.

3) Deployment -- barring further revisions of the mercurial EULA, VFP can be deployed with minimal software / license cost. I hope the folks at Microsoft would agree that a VFP application is more cost effective than say JAVA / ORACLE or PERL / SYBASE. ( Here in California, I know of several large organizations where VFP is not an official IT language, but where the cost of acquisition is so low that it slides below the "radar" and therefore there are dozens of copies of VFP running in user departments -- off the books of course! )

4) Feature set -- after years of OOP and promises of more to come in EUROPA ( even the report writer ! ) I personally look forward to keeping VFP in my personal tool kit. I would hope to see OOP applied to the menu sub system and even the task bar.

In conclusion, at no time has VFP been the only tool in my kit, but at this time I don't intend to discard it either.