>Now I'd have to use a word but it became forbidden to mention it over here. At least for me. If you don't know that word I'll just say that it begins with "Mark" and ends with "eting".
What about that word. Yeah, Visual FoxPro is not strategic to Microsoft. It hasn't been in a long time, and it will never be again. That doesn't mean it will die but it will be a marginal product. It is what it is and it will stay there. It's been like this for close to 10 years now. And it's still here...
Is that the right thing to do? I'm not sure. Put yourself in MS's shoes. Would you really want to push a technology that's distracting from your strategic platform? Where's the value in that...
>To get future customers you have to make efforts to get them. Do you really think it's the case with the (put forbidden word here) being done on VFP?
See above. I don't think Microsoft cares much about new VFP customers. It does care enough not to want to piss off existing customers. And while the VFP team is small it is one of the most talented teams at Microsoft that listens and works miracles with very little staff.
>>Heck, you love VFP so much yet you've publicly stated that you probably won't upgrade to 9.0 because it doesn't offer anything you need. So where are your loyalties really?
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>Come on Rick you're a very bright guy don't make comments like that. Would you buy the newest version of anything if according to you the most important innovation on that new version was the new color used for the shipping box?
Interesting. I'd call that downright ignorant. VFP 9 is full of many major enhancements that fix and update existing functionality. True they're not the 'Oh my god I gotta have it now' type of functionality, but it's very important stuff. The SQL enhancements alone are major improvements. The new Unicode features at least make VFP sort of play in the Unicode field now where it was nearly impossible before. There have been tons of major fixes to the way COM objects work in VFP. The new binary type support is major too that makes it so much easier to work with Binary data whether it comes out of SQL Server, or whether you're passing binary data to a COM object or API call... The report writer - Ok, not much use to me but a lot of people have asked for this and it's a pretty cool and extensible way you can extend the Report writer now.
If you're using VFP every day, then these features are damn important. If nothing else VFP 9 is a lot more stable than previous versions (at least for me). Since installing on my Web Server (late beta timeframe) I have crashed VFP once where it used to crash about once a week. Help Builder used to crash regularily due to ActiveX control issues - no more. This is stuff that everyone can use without doing anything.
Claude whines about everything and has little to contribute. This is what's all about - you can't say VFP is the s*it then whine that this or that isn't good enough. You can't have it both ways.
>If it was the case VFP would've been modified so that the ancient codebase would'nt be anciend codebase no more.
VFP is compatible with FoxBase. Remember that. That's why much of that old codebase is in there. ALong the same lines VFP works as fast as it does because precisely because it is based on this old super-optimized codebase rather than bloated C++ code Microsoft uses in other products. Updating the codebase would likely result in a major slowdown.
>I respect your opinion when you state that MS is not abandoning VFP but I don't feel the same way about it. To me releases of new versions is not enough. you have to show after that release that you really care and the answer to me here is (put forbidden word here). Not the minimal for but a real effort to show developers that they're working with a tool that really has a future.
Microsoft is not playing a lying game. They've been pretty open about their policy: What you see is what you get. No more, no less. They will continue the product as long as there's interest and there's something to do. But don't expect marketing on a grand scale to praise the virtues. It just doesn't fit with Microsoft's strategy. So VFP will be marketed at the already converted.
If you love VFP and that's what you want to use and can get away with to make a living - great. There's lots of opportunities out there where it's not necessary to 'push the tool' and VFP fits that bill just fine. There it is. If you need the marketing support - move on to something that has it. It's really that simple.
