What to do when VFP is not alive anymore? 1

[Eliott]

Somewhere I read that Microsoft will not issue a Visual FoxPro 10, that "powerful nine" will cross into the Sedna project, and support for VFP 9 will stop after the 2014 year. This news really saddened me, because I have so far passed all versions of FP, from the time of MS DOS, through the VFP version 3, 5, 6, and now 9th Actually, I started as a COBOL programmer, and later I worked with Clipper small and medium projects and when I first saw the FP 2.6 for DOS I could not resist. I tried it in the meantime: C, Pascal, Delphi, Gupta ... But nothing was so easy and at your fingertips without having to learn everything from scratch. I thought that big M$ in the new version of VFP will install at least native support for MS SQL Server Express instead of the weak DBC, which would definitely make VFP as "gunboat" for all small and medium-DB programmers under Win platform, but it seems nothing of it.
As I plan to engage myself in programming for future decades, I am interested in whether on the market are some similar to VFP RAD-tools that include a relatively easy way of use today popular relational databases? Someone mentioned PowerBuilder, Visual FlexData... but I have not had the pleasure to test them. Do either of you working on any one alternative when VFP is not alive anymore? What are your thoughts about it? Thank you for your honest ideas & proposals.

There is no good nor evil, just decisions and consequences.

 

[MrDataGuy]

Eliott,
I could spend hours and hours talking and writing about the subject (can of worms) you have open for discussion. And In the past I have, but let me try to summarize my thinking.

-VFP has been, is, and will continue to be a great product. (I started with dBase][, yes before even dBase][ +, switch to FoxBASE within 3 months of its release and all version of Fox to today’s)

-I continue to develop with VFP because I think it is the best tool sometimes for my client's needs.

-There will not be a magic switch thrown in 2014 to stop VFP (or even dBase][ ) apps from working or new ones from being written

-New developments in O.S.s will cause greater and greater issues for VFP apps as time goes on

-It will be more and more difficult to integrate VFP with other ‘modern’ apps

-It saddens, frustrates, angers, etc. etc. that this fine product is being slowly killed.

-I have to grow up and realize that things happens and I have to move on (like doing more with .net )

-I think about the book “Who moved my Cheese” when pondering about this situation. (It is a short easy read and if you have not read it, get a copy from the library and read it, IMO )

I have no ‘perfect’ solution but I hope that I have offered above some very limited words of wisdom and if nothing else let you know that there are others that feel your pain.


Lion Crest Software Services
Anthony L. Testi
President

http://www.LionCrestSoftwareServices.com

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Eliott,

this news officially was announced March 2007, Sedna already has been released and moved under the roof of the VFPX project at codeplex.

Sedna

http://vfpx.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Sedna&referringTitle=Home

VFPX

http://vfpx.codeplex.com

There has been much discussion already and so you may not get many responses, but it's of course always nice to exchange ideas and talk about what people already are migrating to or have migrated to.

Our customer had trouble with the opportunistic locking in the SMB2 protocoll, so the first step we did was migrate to MS SQL Server.

The future is still open in regard to what client language to use, but it surely will be MS for that customer, most probably .NET

Anyway there is no haste, you still see old foxpro apps running, so from the technical perpective you don't need to fear VFP will stop working. Even if Windows 8 would cause a dependency of VFP runtimes with the Windows API to discontinue, you'd be able to use virtualisation and run fox apps in a virtual machine seamless together with other apps on the native windows platform.

It depends very much on your situation and you projects where you would migrate. There is a lot of money projected in smartphone apps, so going a totally new route of iPhone or Android development could be an option. MS is late with Phone7, but in the past has been late in a technology often and still got a big if not the biggest market share.

Cloud Computing is getting more important and not only MS offers services there.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[craigber]

VFP and VFP apps will keep working. But, if you want to keep yourself up to date, don't look at PowerBuilder nor DataFlex. Look at .NET, Ruby on Rails, php, etc. Java is another option, but there are lots of questions about its future now that Larry "I am god" Ellison owns it.

Craig Berntson
MCSD, Visual C# MVP,

http://www.craigberntson.com/blog

 

[Eliott]

Yeah, looks like I asked old question. I'm still deep in VFP 9 and I like the way how I'm able easy to make app that works fast and without complicated interface. probably I'll "drive" VFP until there is enough "fuel" for it on my & customers computers.
Beside VFP I use VB, php 5, Javascript spiced with HTML, I made small foot steps with C#, .Net... I'm also present on other OS than on Windows, but when I pick alternate tools I always have in my mind tools that shall work smoothly with DB without recoils and sticking. Sure, make VFP app to work with relational DB isn't easy like to do it with DBC, but most of code is similar. So, I would like to put on rail another development tool where I could to reuse my experiences I got with FP and VFP.
Thank you to all for your comments and taught, I really appreciate your time and will to help with advices.

There is no good nor evil, just decisions and consequences.

 

[JRB-Bldr]

"What to do when VFP is not alive anymore?"

You can always go fishing.

While Micro$oft might not be continuing with new VFP releases, you will be able to continue developing in it for a LONG time. And what you have already developed should continue to work for a LONG time.

The biggest challenge will be your customer's perception. THEY might begin to think that VFP is 'dead' and want you to develop in another language. If so, "the customer is always right!" (actually no, but lets go with it for now).

The replies above offer some good alternatives.

Good Luck,
JRB-Bldr

 

[gshurman]

I to have been developing in fox since FoxBase. While I still plan to keep developing in VFP, I'm looking at aome alternatives. One that looks interesting is Microsoft's Light Switch. It's been in public beta for a while. It looks like a good learning tool that can get you started with .net without the pain of jumping into the full Visual Studio.

 

[quakeunity77]

I recently purchased dBase plus. It uses the .dbf VFP files and the programming language is similar. However, all the programs have to be re-written with modifications for the dBase plus syntax. dBase plus also makes usable browser pages. Does anyone have experience with dBase plus? This is the newest version of the old dBase program. If you have experience with the program, do you think that the program and company will be around for a few years or is it going to die like VFP?

 

[dbMark]

The dBase or Visual dBase community is, as far as I can discern, much smaller than the Visual FoxPro community. Similarly, I believe there are more Visual FP installations out there than Visual dBase installations.

If you currently have more DOS apps in dBase than FoxPro, then it might make sense to go with Visual dBase if you want to do the least conversion work. But I wouldn't leave DOS FoxPro to go to Visual dBase, you'd be leaving the larger community support and going to the smaller one. Besides, either Visual destination will involve code changes, so probably better to go with VFP.

There are still dBase and FoxPro DOS apps out there, even 10-15 years after they ceased development. Visual programs still have a long life out there. The nice thing about VFPx and SednaX is that these extensions will help VFP stay competitive with newer technology - and even access it - for a long time to come.

 

[quakeunity77]

dbMark: dbase plus 2.70 is new! It is NOT the old dBase III or IV. It is not Visual dbase. It is not dos. It has Windows® 7 and Vista® Compatibility

 

[kraftyNYC]

I came across this thread when a .net post led me to west wind technologies and I could not resist checking if anybody was still using VFP.

I started in FP 2.5 for DOS and was a die hard VFP programmer and consultant right up until 2004.

Long story short I had been struggling to learn .net as the VFP work was drying up fast.

Sad to say I had to take 6 months off to really pound C# into my head and get certified as I saw my career otherwise going seriously downhill.

I ended up bullshitting my way into a .NET job at a large Fortune 500 company and the skills I learned as a VFP developer translated cerebrally, although definitely not programatically.

These days I code 14 hours a day in SQL, C# 4, JQuery, HTML, LINQ, and whatever else I can get my hands on.

I have spent the past 14 months learning the ins & outs of the Amazon S3 cloud and I'm doing everything I can to move away from MSFT.

Visual FoxPro made it possible for a law school dropout and entrepreneur at 26 to jump head first into programming and survive to tell the tale.

It's 18 years later and I was just looking at some VFP snippets and it all came rushing back with great nostalgia of my VFP days. One GUI and alot of coffee and I was god.

But now with serious googling skills and an understanding of how the web really works (hard to get with just .net) I am launching a .com and hoping to soon get off the coding merry go round.

I love the insane pace of technology but I must say consulting while enabling one to pay the bills was an endless grind. Now that I have been working on just one app with one mature codebase for 2+ years I realize how much I loathed arguing the merits of VFP to naysayers.

If MSFT had really wanted to revolutionize the world they would have figured out how to take the VFP database and let it scale infinitely and pushed the all-in-one paradigm to work seamlessly with IIS.

LINQ to SQL is one billion time more complex than VFP. The only saving grace is to know how to grab code from google and massage it into a tight architecture.

What I will be forever grateful to VFP for is the debugger. I spent my first year of coding petrified to use the debugger. Than one day I decided to bite the bullet and that changed my life. For the past 15 years I have made the debugger my mistress and with powerful debugging skills you can learn any technology.

Farewell Foxes.

 

[craigber]

kraftyNYC: LINQ to SQL is essentially dead. Entity Framework is the way to go in .NET. LINQ does have some powerful capabilities with LINQ to Objects and LINQ to XML.

As for scalabale databases, SQL Server runs the full line, from LocalDB to SQL Server Enterprise.

Craig Berntson
MCSD, Visual C# MVP,

http://www.craigberntson.com/blog

 

[clipper01]

My 2 cents , agree with all that is said here
1) dotNet / SQL server / entity Frameworks etc is the future
2) but , VFP , still beats all of these hands-down in building plain ol / desk-top / line of business apps
3) would love to know others estimate of time to build comparable VFP app in dotNet , would say at least 4 times ??
4) so to a potential client that has religious hang-ups about dtoNet , u can say do you care if this is built in VFP , C Sharp , B flat if it goes costs you 25% of the cost
5) and in the mean-time, if me , the one-man-show developer is run over by a bus , by then maybe dotNet will have moved on to allow simple desk-top apps to be built at a reasonable cost
6)so if the client just wants a solution , Fox still rocks!

 

[Mike Lewis]

dotNet / SQL server / entity Frameworks etc is the future

Entity Framework is the way to go

At risk of sounding cynical, my eyes glaze over when I hear phrases like that.

Over the years, I've heard it so many times:

- "Turbo Pascal is the future"

- "dBASE IV is the way to go"

- "xBase is dead. Learn FileMake Pro".

I long ago learned to ignore the future until it arrives. What matters is what's here now - what the clients and employers want today.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips, training, consultancy

 

[newtofoxpro]

I read this tread because, today I am busy with migrating fpw2.6 app to vfp8. In fact, for me there is no strong reason to migrate fpw to vfp. No doubt advantage is there. If M*S not supporting fpw2.6 now, it does not affect me. (tek-tips is alive) I found fpw2.6 is running good on win'7-32bit. Yet, I have selected vfp8 and I am going with it.

Till today, I found vfp8 is good product which complete my all requirements. So I may not ask for new version.

Fear is, I am not much expert member, And the expert members worried about it then there must be some reason.

 

[newtofoxpro]

I don't care about MS not support vfp. Worry is if new comming OS not support VFP

 

[JRB-Bldr]

Worry is if new coming OS not support VFP

Who can predict the future?
If you are able to do so, let me know how to play the stock market to make $$$$ without needing to do software development.

VFP works with Win7, and it is anticipated to work just as well with Win8.
Beyond that, who knows what Micro$oft might 'be hiding up their sleeves'.
Regardless Vista/Win7 did indeed throw us some un-expected curves with UAC, etc., but those were not impossible to resolve.

If you want to be CERTAIN that your development tool will work with upcoming Windows versions - stay with the Microsoft 'mainstream' development tools like .NET. - at least today (who knows what will be 'mainstream' in a few years).

Otherwise, if history is any indication, VFP applications should be running just fine for a good number of years to come - whether previously developed, developed now or developed in the next few years.

Good Luck,
JRB-Bldr

 

[Olaf Doschke]

VFP running on Windows 8 is already reported by Matt Slay and others:

http://mattslay.com/visual-foxpro-on-windows-8/

You can also download the developer preview and see for yourself, especiall try your application and all it's dependencies on win8.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/br229518

Even if windows 9 would not support VFP, you will be able to run in virtual machines, as today is done with old fox dos or old fox windows versions. For licensing reasons you will not be able to ditribute VMWare Player prepared virtual machines with Windows and your application, but I'm hoping this kind of distribution will be possible in the future with far less license fees on the Windows within a virtual machine than today is asked for.

You will also be able to keep running in Win7 for sure, Win8 most likely.

And besides that you can run fox in the cloud, where you have full control over the hosted OS and users won't need to install and run a virtual machine.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[Nigel Gomm]

the biggest worry for me is not that windows won't support VFP (although that will certainly be the case with ARM processors) but that we are already entering a post-PC world and our customer base won't be using windows.

as Olaf says RemoteApp and the like will certainly keep legacy systems in business for a while yet.

But i'm still looking for the tools that will enable me to reach the largest number of potential customers with as few tools and languages as possible. Browser based apps of course will do that but...

Silverlight looked like a likely candidate for a while but seems to be being superceded by something else for the WinRT.

I've been looking into Appcelerator's Titanium as a way of running HTML5 and Javascript cross-platform.

What have others been looking into?


(N.B. previous threads along these lines seem to have confused skills we should be learning to get a job with, what i think we're talking about here, tools to meet customer demands and create vertical apps.)

 

[newtofoxpro]

Other member in this thread posted about DotNet. Are they sure DotNet would rocks in future ?