Claude,

I would have to agree that "ignorant" is the key word here. I have many contacts that I met previously that were either FP developers with me, or doing other things in the IT dept. The people doing other things still worked closely enough with me to see what and how I was doing things.

Many of these people moved onto VB, then .Net. None of these folks are complaining about anything in .Net. None. Not one. Nada.

I have studied enough .Net, Java to know that many of the complaints people on this board make are easily overcome. As Rick as stated, it's a matter of taking the time to develop your framework, so that you have classlibs built for the mundane tasks.

At that point, there are no benefits to using Fox, unless you want to limit your career posibilities, continuously have to defend your choice of tools to potential customers, don't want your phone to ring with calls from recruiters.....


>Well, that's where we differ and that goes to the root of the problem, in my opinion. Developers aren't blown away because MS and other .NET evangelists like you are either subtley telling developers that VFP is not good at this or that or are ignoring it(not marketing it). A lot of FUD("fear,uncertainty,denial" for anyone not familiar with the acronym) is being passed around. Other developers probably would be really blown away with how fast and cheaply(this is key) a world class application could be put together with vfp compared to Python, perl, MySQL, etc. But, you won't find MS telling anyone this...
>
>>I don't know what your background is, but your world view sounds pretty limited.
>>
>>Many people know about VFP and guess what: They are not blown away. They might have been 10 years ago. People might be blown away by great applications, but not by VFP. Great developers will great applications and they'll do it in almost any tool.
>>
>>VFP is nice but there's very little that is left that is truly unique in VFP. If you go and sell a solution and say I'm using VFP and you get: Why VFP, isn't that product dead? What do you tell them? What makes VFP so unique?
>>
>>There are a few things that are very cool - mainly the DML and the ability to dynamically execute code easily that is not that easily done in say .NET or Java. But so what? Those are minor things - that can be handled in a different way.
>>
>>+++ Rick ---
>>
>>>I just think it would be great and ironic if VFP were allowed to be in it's own orbit like many Open SOurce development tools and could compete with them on that level. It would blow them away. But, somehow, in it's current state of limbo with MS(and especially if they starting phasing it out more) VFP gets a bad reputation as an unwanted or misbehaving child. The FUD from MS and other .NET evangelists is that VFP really doesn't do this or that very well so you really should move to .NET. The web stuff is a perfect example. I'm sure many at MS and the .NET faithful would have been happy if VFP mtdll technology was never created. Then they could really claim that VFP has no business being on the web and .NET should be used. The fact is it is a huge improvement and was never encouraged or utilized the way it could have been by MS or even you to make vfp an even stronger tool...
>>>
>>>>>I like the analogy with Python, Perl, Linux, etc. VFP beats these development environments hands-down, in my opinion, including web applications. Before MS even contemplates not continuing VFP, they should consider making it Open SOurce and letting developers continue it's development...
>>>>
>>>>First off Microsoft is not abandoning VFP. Second, even if they did they surely wouldn't make it open source because there's too much technology in the product that is used elsewhere in Microsoft. What would be the possible benefit of that anyway? To Microsoft none - other than loosing some revenue along with potential future customers. 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?
>>>>
>>>>Do you think there will be hordes of developers lining up to extend FoxPro? More importantly, will you? VFP is a based a lot on an ancient codebase for one thing and outside of the FoxPro community nobody will be very interested to work on a product like this. Remember Fox programmers probably don't have the skills to work on a C++ project to provide new functionality so this resource pool of developers would have to come mostly from outside of the Fox community.
>>>>
>>>>All that said, Microsoft has given no indication they won't continue updating Visual FoxPro. What you don't get apparently is that the Fox team has for the last couple of years asked developers what they want out of the product for future versions and while there's been lots of input on fixing small things and updating this or that, there aren't really groundbreaking or enhancning ideas coming forth.
>>>>
>>>>What do you want? Why let others do the work for you - say what is that you want... and don't be vague like 'better Internet support'.
>>>>
>>>>Visual FoxPro is a great tool and it does a lot of things well and you can be really productive. But before you can be you have to learn to know it well. VFP's learning curve is no less than .NET, *if* you start from scratch. The problem is for VFP developers to go to .NET because a lot of things are done very differently and it's almost like starting from scratch because of it. That's both good and bad in some ways, but ultimately if you build smart framework driven code the business layer code you write at the front end is no more complex in .NET than it is in FoxPro... it took time, but nowadays my Fox and .NET business level code looks nearly identical in the front end. Yet I have a lot more flexibility in .NET in terms of framework support as well as in the ASP.NET architecture.
>>>>
>>>>The right tool for the job. And my choice on the Web would clearly go to .NET. Remember I'm saying this having an interest in FoxPro technology on the Web as I sell a product in this space. I think pure ASP.NET (not using COM) is clearly better technology than anything you can do with Fox. Web Connection included. And definitely ASP+COM (or ASP.NET + COM).
>>>>
>>>>If you want to use Fox than one of the Fox tools will serve you well, but if the language is not so much of a pre-requisite I would highly recommend ASP.NET as the Web development platform! To look at it from a single-minded 'Fox is simply better' POV without really understanding what you can gain is merely thick headed, IMHO... In terms of conversion the same rules apply - if you have something that works in Fox, there's no need to blindly jump ship and go to .NET. You can do everything you can in ASP.NET with the right tools. You can even do it quickly and if you design it well even elegantly. But it will take a lot more work to design something well as you can in ASP.NET...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>+++ Rick ---
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>Hi Walter,
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> [...] you still have to ask yourself the question, is this the language >that can be seen as the successor of VFP ? Currently I say no.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>My additional 0.02
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I feel the same about VFP. No MS successor currently. I have practiced foxpro and VFP extensively since 1986. Most of us here on UT have enjoyed the sheer productivity of fox when tackling database stuff. We have VFP 9. Thanks to MS for their active support for this great old tool.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Part of the experience is related to the fact VFP is an interpreter.
>>>>>>Like it or not, the tech gurus will have to accept that a strictly typed-environment is not what most fox people who produce midsize "data-centric applications" wish.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>If you pay attention the "high-end" discussions that take place on the "python" language forums (a general-purpose language that shares quite a few things with fox), you will find a few VERY sharp guys (IT reseach background for most of them) advocating for smart "run-time" based programming tools. Ain't a discussion between old and new ...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Currently the discussion in the python-dev world (the whole stuff is "open-sourced" and the tech discussions ain't biased by commercial views) revolves around optional (yes!) versus strict-datatyping ...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Some will push for it arguing that stricter data-typing is key to run-time speed. Others will resist arguing that "simplicity matters" most.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>As far as application-development is concerned, it looks like the great long-running debate around computer language efficiency, compiler-vs-interpreter is far from closed by java and .net...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>François