"There will be no VFP 10" 3

[GriffMG]

Mike,

I *do* get some customers ask what language my apps are written in - usually because they like the app., but need support from IT to get them into the company.

In general, I just write up a tech. description and highlight that post installation the idea is to be IT transparent and that is enough.

I have had a couple of occasions where a client has said, after the event, 'oh, we didn't want that in VFP' but not since people 'got real' about web interfaces and realised they aren't/weren't (yet) perfect for every application.

B-)

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

 

[DTracy]

When asked, I tell my customers that my programs are written in English so as to be more universally understood.

David.

 

[Imaginecorp]

I'm curious. Working as an in-house developer I never interact with "customers" as such - do a lot of them ask what language you've written your application in?

If I had a penny for every time we were asked, I would be richer than the Queen. My response had always been to show them Steve Balmers letter to the Fox community of “undying” support for VFP. People ask for what they think is fashionable at that time. One small company wanted an Oracle back end. When I asked them if they had a DBA to support it, they did not know what I was talking about. It is always been exasperating to first explain that VFP is owned by Microsoft; second the rumors of its death were greatly exaggerated etc.

When asked, I tell my customers that my programs are written in English so as to be more universally understood.

That would get you shown the door within a second {s} especially as the client is being asked to spend between $40,000 to $120,000

Most owners or CFO’s don’t care but it’s always the IT guys, in bigger companies and they influence the buying decision, who wants to know as they may have to write ad-hoc reports using our databases. Crystal and Cognos were the favorites till VFP 9. This gave us the capability to allow users to design reports at run-time.

Hello .Net…

 

[Imaginecorp]

I have been reading most of the “Blogs” from these VFP “Experts”, MVP’s etc, telling us little children not to worry, comparisons with Word… Good God!
Are these guys for real? Are they even connected to the real world? Have they ever walked the streets selling a product? I don’t think so. Apart from Rick’s West Wind, what have they done? Writing useless frameworks that the naive buy, or books that clearly plagiarize VFP help, but with cutesy titles, or speaking at conventions does not qualify in my book.
Sorry. I am just pissed… Though I expected this, was hoping with the user base, Microsoft would not pull the plug…

 

[Dan Freeman]

Vertical market products are an entirely different beast.

IT departments DO ask what they're written in. Corporate mandates DO say that all database apps will be SQL-server.

We've certainly lost sales because of VFP. We get them back two years later because our competitors can't handle their requirements, but that's another issue. We also make money converting their existing data. We now know our competitors' data structures almost better than our own.

We compete on features, not on platform.

This announcement IS a big deal for us, but we still have people running our DOS version written in Clipper S/86. (It's fast as all get out on modern hardware, by the way.) We have time to re-tool.

 

[baltman]

There isn't anything on the market that can compete with VFP on speed of data manipulation and RAD. If there was, that would be what I am using. I can only hope that MS doesn't bloat LINQ and make it too complex and slow.

I am not impressed with SQL Server performance (e.g. thread183-1344689) and am skeptical but hopeful that VS/LINQ/SQL Server Express local will develop to the point of being most of what VFP is today.

Brian

 

[craigber]

DWGrewe:
Why are you complaining about hardware not being able to run Vista? Most hardware couldn't run Windows 95 when it was released. I say, big deal. XP will continue to run fine for many years to come. But Vista is much, much more than a pretty face.

ImagineCorp:
By far, the majority of MVPs do not develop frameworks or even developer tools, but create custom products. I create vertical market apps. I'm very much aware of what the marketplace is like as are all the MVPs.

Craig Berntson
MCSD, Visual FoxPro MVP,

http://www.craigberntson.com

Author, CrysDev: A Developer's Guide to Integrating Crystal Reports"

 

[Nro]

Hi.

Too bad for the Fox.

The only hope I have is that it’s not turn like dBase or Clipper (lots of people remember, but nobody use it now). MS buy Fox for A : to kill dBase (Aston Tate commit suicide with dBase IV anyway) and B : Rushmore technology (Wikipedia)

VFP is in position 19 in the Tiobe Software programming index (

http://www.tiobe.com/index.htm?tiobe_index).

Still a great programming language.

I’ve invest almost 15 years of programming tools and classes in Fox and VFP and still, I don’t consider me as a VFP expert. I still have a lot to learn from VFP. VFP is a tool to create applications, and applications, for me, mean money.

And I will use it for the next 10 year. I hope.

Nro

PS . When you install Visual Studio 2005 on Vista, you’ll receive a nice message saying that there some compatibility issue with this software … Hope that MS will not commit suicide or I’ll have to use Wordperfect

N.

 

[GriffMG]

Actually, people do still use Clipper - or at least I do.

I have one or two apps in Clipper that have been running since the early nineties and one (recently converted to xBase++) which is enormous...

If it works, don't fix it.

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

 

[Dan Freeman]

We still have clients running the clipper version of our app too.

In fact, one of our devs is at his desk THIS WEEK converting some custom utilities to enable one of those clients to upgrade to the VFP version.

And that won't be the end of the conversions.

 

[dgrewe]

IN my research for a replacement Database Software for VFP I found this.

http://www.dbase.com/

dBase, It went Visual, after Borland dumped to an Independent Compamy. They put Money into it and made it OOP. IT'S BACK



David W. Grewe (Dave)

 

[Nro]

Hi all

My point is when a company drops the development of a product, sometimes it means the dead of that product. I used to develop in Clipper a long time ago, and I still have some apps that run on it, even on XP machine now, but, I’ll never write one line of Clipper code again. Even if it has OOP, fast record selection, nice interface, and so on.

As for dBase, I did almost lose my shirt when I tried to make it work (dBase IV) on my customer places. It was so buggy, I had to modify the code generated by the report designer because report skips pages, lots of nice features never worked, it crash randomly…

I fact I must thanks dBase, because it was one reason we switch to Foxpro (2.0)


Nro

 

[DougHennig]

ImagineCorp:

>Are these guys for real? Are they even connected to the real world? Have they ever walked the streets selling a product? I don’t think so. Apart from Rick’s West Wind, what have they done? Writing useless frameworks that the naive buy, or books that clearly plagiarize VFP help, but with cutesy titles, or speaking at conventions does not qualify in my book.

I've been developing and selling vertical market applications since 1988. When I speak at a conference, I talk to dozens of other developers about their experiences and plans for the future. Every single day, by phone and email, I communicate with developers at other companies. Does this qualify me to be "connected to the real world"?

Doug

 

[kjv1611]

So, if a person were considering learning FoxPro, would all of this say that it would not be a good use of time? Would it be better to just learn/catchup to some of the newer languages, such as the .Net stuff? I know a little VB and C++. I was thinking C# would be the way to go, but I guess that depends upon the application needs.

dbMark mentioned:
As I understand it, .Net has a VFP Toolkit with ports of many great VFP functions and commands. At least that's something.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vfoxpro/bb190277.aspx

http://foxcentral.net/microsoft/vfptoolkitnet.htm

So, from the sound of that, there is a way to convert the VFP stuff over to .Net? If so, then that might would make it easier to convert VFP stuff to VB6/VBA through that method - or at least put it in terms I'd recognize a little better. I was asking about this possibility in thread1254-1347793.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[Mike Lewis]

Nro,

My point is when a company drops the development of a product, sometimes it means the dead of that product.

In my (very extensive) experience, what really kills a product is not lack of development, but the fact that it's a lousy product.

People in this thread have mentioned Clipper, FoxPro for DOS, Foxpro for Windows ... these are still going strong. No-one is developing new versions of them, and there is no vendor support. But they are strong products in their own right, and will be around for a while still to come.

But consider a product like Visual Objects. This was the Windows version of Clipper. It had a much larger potential market than Clipper, and was developed by a very much larger company. But it died within months ... because it was a lousy product.

Visual FoxPro is not a lousy product. It still enjoys on-going vendor support and a thriving third-party market. My bet is that it will still be going strong a decade from now.

Mike



__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk

 

[dbMark]

DWGrewe, I used to program in dBase III+ in my early years. Yes, Visual dBase exists but I wouldn't quite call it "back". Look at the Visual dBase forum289. There are 4 posts so far this year and 8 last year. That many threads are started in the 5 VFP forums each day! I believe it is a niche market at this point, well suited for upgrading and handling prior dBase code, but nowhere near VFP's footprint in the market and unlikely to have any like VFP's extensive toolset.

Similar situation with Clipper. Good for upgrading similar code, but to start fresh there are lots of other mainstream programming languages.

My uncle grew up on COBOL. He said there are still programs running on it after 30-40 years. Of course, in its heyday it was one of the top languages. Still, I wonder how many of today's programmers would start a new project in COBOL...

 

[DSummZZZ]

My uncle grew up on COBOL. He said there are still programs running on it after 30-40 years. Of course, in its heyday it was one of the top languages. Still, I wonder how many of today's programmers would start a new project in COBOL...

See my earlier post
We have 2 in-house programmers who still develop using COBOL on our mainframe.
Not my first choice, but it does its job. Like - I'm guessing - VFP will do for many years to come.

Maybe someone will end up buying the source from M.S. and taking over? It would be an interesting prospect.


-Dave Summers-

Even more Fox stuff at:

http://www.davesummers.net/foxprolinks.htm

 

[Nro]

Come on. Foxpro will die and you’re joking on COBOL. Why not RPG or APL. Don’t forget PASCAL or LISP. I did work in all that language, a long time ago. Mainframes or mini were nightmares for me.

I saw the light. It was a FOX …

Nro

 

[Imaginecorp]

The biggest joke is if you were a COBOL expert, you could make more money than an Oracle DBA. Big time shortage and every government agency uses mainframes - COBOL. NYC will pay between $175 - $225 an hour.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Maybe someone will end up buying the source from M.S. and taking over?

Now that really would be the kiss of death.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk