Needs are not changing that fast. We've known VFP was going to die for several years. You need to be adding more arrows to the quiver, if you haven't already done that, years ago. I think I will be using VFP for years to come, if only for data munging, but as for developing apps, I will continue doing some Web Connection stuff, because it just works, and can be the middleware for a lot of stuff. However, I have decided to move into PHP primarily because it seems to be fairly robust, has a large community base, is freeware that functions and you don't have to worry about which dot net version is running.
John Harvey -----Original Message----- From: ProFox [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Stephen Russell Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2012 8:26 AM To: ProFox Email List Subject: Re: Do NOT use "old" FoxPro? On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 7:49 AM, Wes Wilson <[email protected]> wrote: > Kurt, > > > A business person's very first question is always "Can I afford this > solution?" not "Is this the best language?". If he can afford it, the > next question is "Do I want to put that much of my limited resources > into this project?". In other words, the return on investment may not > be as high as the return on investment in, for example, increasing his > marketing and sales staff. > ------------------- > People at "the" company say that Foxpro is dead and we don't want it. Do you think that was started for a reason? Was it one group of programmers who were attempting to take over a lot of business that use to be xBase? Or is it really the fact that file based data systems of the 80s and 90s are no longer appropriate for the needs of today? Needs are changing fast and VFP is in a frozen state. I feel that more people in business have more on the ball with respect to technology then they did 10-15-20 years ago. I think that they are looking for solutions that they can put 5 to 10 years into for an expected lifetime. I would not rely on 32 bit systems to maintain a life in near future releases of OS. > Those 2 questions are then followed by many others that all need to be > carefully considered. My plan is, with the help of all of our programmers' > experiences, develop a comprehensive checklist that will be sent to > all of my current and prospective customers. It will also be on my website. > > But I digress. Your email specifically talked about Visual FoxPro 9 > being too old. What makes a computer language old? Does old mean > applications are going to develop fatal diseases and die? Does it mean > the other solutions are less expensive to write and support? Exactly > what does it mean? I think for most technical people, it means that > Microsoft will no longer support Visual FoxPro 9 as of January 2015. > Does that mean all of our programs will stop working in February 2015? > Question: how many decades ago did Microsoft stop supporting DOS? Question: how many DOS applications are still in use? > Answer: lots. Why do so many DOS apps still work? Because only the > lack of a platform and operating system will stop DOS from working. > ---------------- > Getting a system for web consumption is difficult. Consumption of data from customers or suppliers is difficult with foxpro compared to other contemporary languages. > Conclusion: for many businesses, investing in Visual FoxPro 9 is one > of the smartest business decisions they will ever make. ------------ > Aging programmer pool. No real youth, in industry, supporting the product. Owning company has put a fork in future development. Why is it the smartest decision? -- Stephen Russell Sr. Analyst Ring Container Technology Oakland TN 901.246-0159 cell --- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts --- multipart/alternative text/plain (text body -- kept) text/html --- [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
