Hello again Wes,
I saw you sent me this same email to me offline from this list - but,
figured I would make my response.
Bad enough I lost my job - now, today - Sunday - in sunny weather - we
just lost our power again - along with a lot of our surronding
neighbors. So - now I sit on my laptop outside a 7-11, as the power on
it is dying - and I will have to find a place to go and plug in later
today - although, glad to jack into OptimumWifi - which is located LOTS
of places around the island - including in front of the 7-11.
So - truth is - I've already been giving this a lot of thought in the
past 24 hours. One option I was thinking - is that I could literally
LEARN a new technology and "cut my teeth on it" using this project - and
that would be one way to be assured of GETTING the project - and getting
new experience! Although, in communicating with them about this project
- and I can ALSO suggest your really good point of lowered costs in
developing the system using VFP - since it would not require a costlier
solution like the extra time & effort to setup an SQL server - as well
and developing the rest of the solution. I'm sure you would agree with
me that THIS is finally a GOOD Idea(learning a New Tech)! Right?
But - if I DID attempt to learn a new tech. - I'd like to do something
that would NOT have a steep learning curve - and, free dev. tools are a
MUST - since I can't afford to buy Dev tools now! Any suggestions folks???
Anyway - gotta send this and shut down the laptop before it dies...
L8r,
-K-
On 11/11/2012 8:49 AM, Wes Wilson wrote:
Kurt,
My message has been aimed at those businesses who already have FoxPro. I assume
your email relates to a new project.
The real question is not how "old" FoxPro is but whether for this customer with
his constraints, is it the best solution.
If we gave all of the specifics to 100 seasoned programmers with a variety of
backgrounds and skill sets, we would likely get about 50 different solutions
with about 5 of the solutions clustering around the major languages. But based
on my 31 years experience, almost all of the solutions would be from a
technical point of view, not from a business persons point of view.
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.
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.
Only the lack of a 32 bit operating system will stop Visual FoxPro from working
and that day, in my opinion and many others, is 10-20 years away but more
likely 30 or more years away. By that time, there will certainly be solutions
infinitely better than anything available today. Meantime, the business person
can use the vast sums saved by using Visual FoxPro (yes, VFP is demonstrably
less expensive to write and maintain) for better and more profitable purposes.
Conclusion: for many businesses, investing in Visual FoxPro 9 is one of the
smartest business decisions they will ever make.
More later and thanks for your feedback. Please let me know what feed back you
get. I want to broadcast it to the world.
Wes
Wes Wilson, President
ERW Custom Programming, Inc.
Crescent Lake Plaza
5459 Elizabeth Lake Rd.
Waterford, MI 48327
(248) 683-4182
http://www.erw.com/
[email protected]
www.visualfoxprohelpwanted.com/VFPHelpWantedShortForm.php
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