>If we didn't have Foxpro for desktop/database development, what would we use?

I have no time for joke to-day. So here is my serious answer. And a series of 3 questions for you...

1) Do you want a product owned by a marketing-driven entity?
2) Do you want a compiler hence losing the fantastic productivity offered by clever interpreters "à la fox"?
3) Do you want to remain stuck to win32 (nothing against it by the way)?

If ony ONE OF YOUR ANSWERS to these question is à big and loud YES, you will find litteraly hundreds of solutions (including both crap and marvelous tools) waiting for both your money and time. I have got no clue which one to choose. I expect the answer to be either THE MS solution or the SUN one, possibly on a development platform provided by borland.

If your answer to any of the aforementioned question is NO. Then you have a very limited set of choices... I'm currently on my way to python + WXpython. I should say that i am as enthustiastic about python as i was when discovered fox way back in 1986! Python is a personal bet. It clearly offers the best syntax ever for a computer language.

This is personal opinion, of course. So back to facts:

+ The whole python thing is free, the syntax has no changed for years, it's dread simple to code and runs nearly all existing platforms,

+ This community litteraly own the tool (> 1 000 000 lines of ansi C). A significant difference!

- Not one big commercially-supported IDE, "data-aware" data-grids or a decent report writer...

- You'll miss the friendly and business-orientated UT members on the pubic python newgroup. They are charming, polite and clever people. But the user-based is mostly scientific and academic (including IT research smart guys). They (the community) have definitely a greater capability to grasping complexity but their communication skills not exactly as good as here on UT.

But the tool is worth the effort. I pushed all my foxisapi-based stuff to modpython/apache. I wrote the whole thing in notepad! A snap. python is definitely the tool for servlets and complex http-based applications.

Google - the product itself - as python is a significant part of the thing. Check www.python.org).

WXpython which is getting momentum now whil brings an "open source" UI to this pretty blind tool (the default UI named TKInter is not on par with MS or Apple). Alas it is currently still on its way and badly documented.

"There's no such thing as a free lunch"

Francis