Has anyone remembered .... ? 1

[Mike Lewis]

Nobody here seems to have remembered the significant anniversary we should be noting this month.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[GriffMG]

Go on Mike, do tell!

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

I'm trying to cut down on the use of shrieks (exclamation marks), I'm told they are !good for you. ​

 

[David Higgs]

VFP V 3.0 Launched 25 Years ago?

Regards,

David.

Recreational user of VFP.

 

[GriffMG]

Finest hour speech 80 years ago?

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

I'm trying to cut down on the use of shrieks (exclamation marks), I'm told they are !good for you. ​

 

[David Higgs]

VFP dropped 10 years ago?

Regards,

David.

Recreational user of VFP.

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Then you know this more exactly than

http://www.foxprohistory.org/foxprotimeline.htm

I was between school and studying physics at the time. I thought someone said 30th anniversary. Well, I was in the middle of studying physics in 1995, still not working as a developer. That started in 1999. But no, I had no hands in y2k, neither the bug nor the fixing. It rather started with Perl and Web (ASP classic).

But yes, Mike Lewis, Dan Olsson, Tamar Granor, when she reads this, Dan Freeman, if he ever reads tek-tips anymore, I hope you're well.

Bye, Olaf.

Olaf Doschke Software Engineering

https://www.doschke.name

 

[Mike Lewis]

VFP V 3.0 Launched 25 Years ago

You've got it, David. It was in June 1995, in the run-up to the launch of Windows 95 a few weeks later.

I thought a few more of the folk here would have known the date, but maybe there aren't so many of us oldies around any more.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Dan Olsson]

Oh, yes we are here. I started with FPD 2.0

 

[Mukesh Khandelwal]

I also started from dbase/foxbase and foxpro for Unix

Mukesh Khandelwal

 

[David Higgs]

You've got it, David. It was in June 1995, in the run-up to the launch of Windows 95 a few weeks later.

I was using dBaseIII+ / dBaseIV at that time (for my Railway Databases) and eventually changed to VFP Ver 6 / Ver 9 (for my Railway and Amateur Radio Databases).

Regards,

David.

Recreational user of VFP.

 

[Mike Gagnon]

but maybe there aren't so many of us oldies around any more.

Still here. Although I skipped VFP3 and ended up as a beta tester for VFP4.



If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ184-2483 first.

 

[mjcmkrsr]

Hi,

I started with DBASE II beginning of the 80s of last millennium then DBASE III. DBASE IV was a total disaster and I switched to FP 2 then FPW then VFP up to 9.

Happy Birthday

MK

 

[Mike Lewis]

Fascinating to see that so many of us were around in those heady days of 1995 - and much earlier in many cases. But I think I can beat you all (except possibly MK). I claim to be the first person in the UK to have developed an application in dBASE. (At least, I've been saying that for the last 35 years or so, and so far nobody has contradicted me.)

It was in 1982 (if memory serves). I was visiting a client, a computer dealer in central London. They had just received an evaluation copy of this new database tool. It was in a big grey ring-binder with two 8-inch floppy disks. It was called dBASE II. They didn't know what to do with it, so they gave it to me to look at.

Soon afterwards, I get a commission to develop an order processing system for an agricultural marketing business. I was mainly use MBASIC at the time, but I thought, why not try this new dBASE thing. You can guess the rest. I never went back to Basic.

After that, I moved up though dBASE III Plus (which allowed a massive ten tables to be open at a time, compared to just two for dBASE II). Then to dBASE IV (a bit of a disappointment, to say the least). I dabbled briefly with Quicksilver (anyone remember that?) and Clipper. I came to Foxbase Plus around 1986, and have been with Fox ever since.

I could go on ... but I won't bore you any longer.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[GriffMG]

I think I started with dBaseII in maybe 1985, a bloke from another department, I worked in a Drawing Office, left a book on my desk and I read it over Christmas - it was about how a fella had written a database to help gather funds from his college alumni in the USA and I was entranced. When I returned to work after the break, I asked if I could play on this guy's work computer in the evenings and weekends, he said yes and I developed a kind of library application for the drawings of all the Shell platforms in the Southern North Sea - if you needed to alter one, you had to book it out, make a copy to replace it while you worked on it and then put your new version back in when you were done. They used it for years.

From dBaseII I moved to Clipper at some point, Summer 87 version - so that would be 87 or 88, still look after one Clipper App, now reworked in xBase++. Fell into a job maintaining a VFP3 system and never looked back - I've never found anything better or quicker to work in than dBase type languages, and the best variant of that is VFP9 by a country mile. That said I don't generally do new things in that now, everything is going web based.

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

I'm trying to cut down on the use of shrieks (exclamation marks), I'm told they are !good for you. ​

 

[David Higgs]

I could go on ... but I won't bore you any longer.

I enjoy reading how the various applications evolved over the years. I don't think I will be capable of taking on another Database variant, VFP & MySQL push me to my limits as it is!

I can't remember being disappointed in the move from dBaseIII+ to dBASEIV but obviously later felt the need to move away from a DOS based application to a WIndows based application, enter VFP 6.0 !

Regards,

David.

Recreational user of VFP.

 

[Nigel Gomm]

Mike,

of course, almost by definition, those that were working with fox back then can barely remember why they walked into a room these days let alone a VFP anniversary.

n

p.s. that includes me obviously.

 

[Mike Lewis]

How right you are, Nigel.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[James Long]

I started with dBase II and then did some work in Foxbase. Later used dBXL which was compiled to an exe at that time when the others weren't (I think).

 

[Scott24x7]

Mike,
The reason so many "old timers" may not remember it so much (as that "date"), is it seems like myself, many did not make a migration to VFP initially. I looked at VFP 3.0, and was in attendance at the October DevCon in Phoenix later that year, where MS gave everyone in attendance a copy of VFP 3.0, and then again in 1996 in San Diego where VFP 5.0 was handed round. It wasn't until VFP 6.0 though, that I finally "crossed over" into the OOP world, and started to bash out some new things, and finally making the full cross over (after a few "failed" attempts with earlier versions). For a number of reasons, including OOP being somewhat foreign initially, and the buggy VFP 3, making the curve steeper.

So I don't have a fond memory of the launch of VFP 3, because it was not particularly memorable or useful to me initially.
But there it is.
It was 1995.


Best Regards,
Scott
MSc ISM, MIET, MASHRAE, CDCP, CDCS, CDCE, CTDC, CTIA, ATS

"I try to be nice, but sometimes my mouth doesn't cooperate.

 

[TamarGranor]

And my reason for not knowing the date is the opposite of @Scott24x7's. I was a beta tester, so started working with VFP 3 way, way before it shipped. (I finally threw out the 3.5" disks from some of the early builds a few years ago.)

I don't even know the actual date when HackFox shipped.

What's funny about all this is the dates (and numbers more generally) actually stick in my head, but these dates weren't the kind I cared about.

Tamar