Derek - Your arguments here all seem to be directed towards VFP's own internal DBF support rather than evaluating the entire product as a whole. If one were to remove .DBF support from VFP, the product would STILL be superior to every other RAD tool out there that handles data in my opinion. Believe me, I've spent time looking and hoping to find something, so I could get off the VFP sinking ship, but I've yet to see anything even close.
VFP does sql server handling easier than most everything out there too so let's stop talking about how the DBF is dead. It is dead, I don't think anyone is arguing that. That doesn't mean VFP as a tool should be dead too. The extremely rich yet simplistic OOP & GUI related capabilities of VFP along with the simple yet robust ways we can manage data from other datasources is unparalleled. Once we start talking about the integrated reporting capabilities (especially since VFP9), there's almost no other product to discuss for comparison. These are the points I believe Bill is trying to make! These are the capabilities that help make VFP like no other product out there. Microsoft's .NET doesn't come close (although as they steal more of VFP, it may eventually), yet I find it far more complicated than it needs to be and that is never going to change. PHP & Python are languages, not RAD tools so you can't compare them. Having a sufficient framework and large collections of libraries of code does makes those languages 'closer' to what VFP is when you use them and may eventually allow them to catch up, but that day is not here yet.. Oracle,MySQL,MS SQL, are just databases, and at their best can do only a fraction of what the total VFP product can do for an application developer. With some of the stuff coming out of VFPx and the GDI libraries very talented people are doing, I think you'll find a solution to any VFP limitation / problem you still might have at the moment.. Now, having said all this, I won't disagree that the market is dying. This is simply because of a lack of knowledge, not due to a lack of anything related to VFP. The lack of knowledge comes from years and years of lack of publicity and education intentionally from MS to kill the product. Lay people have trouble when I say that all the time, "well if it's so great why would they kill it, that just makes no sense?" The market need, as Bill points out, is in fact growing. More and more companies need solutions to their technology needs, and they need it faster and cheaper than ever. In fact, the problem is so bad, that many now solve the problem by outsourcing to countries like India for extremely cheap labor. Since they can't seem to find an ultra fast and effective RAD tool, they look to lowering the actual labor costs instead. What a shame!! If only they knew a product like VFP existed ( I mean truly knew what it was capable of ) there would be little need to hire a team of 10-15 3rd world country programmers to do the job of 1-3 VFP programmers. Anyway, my post is simply to clarify arguing VFP's merits as an application toolset/RAD product versus other tools out there. -Steve At 01:51 PM 3/26/2007, you wrote: > > - RDBMS. When the day comes that RDBMS's are passé, replaced with > > something so good that relational doesn't make sense anymore, then I > > would be inclined to agree the genre is dead. > >VFP doesn't even compare with other RDBMS's in common use today. Yes, >sometimes the speed is comparible, but the featureset lags far behind >Oracle, MSSQL, and MySQL(free versions exist of MySQL and MSSQL; >possibly Oracle, but I'm not as familiar). > > > > - Royalty-free. Need I expound? > >What's not? I haven't seen developer tools that are royalty free for a >long time. If you're talking the RDBMS, there are very good free >alternatives(MySQL/MSDE/SQL Express/SQLite) available for everything >that VFP can scale to and even beyond. > > > > - integrated product development system. The 10% at the top of our > >This is very common and has been for years. Not at all unique to VFP or xBase. > > > > - a core language so rich that, after a lot of years, I have yet to use > > every feature. There are some frustrations and limitations, but nothing > > that can't be fixed or improved with effort. If there were a clearly > > superior language/RDBMS dev system on the market, I'd have heard about > > it, and frankly, I would have yearned to use it, but I'm not seeing such > > a thing. What I do see are all the things I have yet to do, and can do, > > with VFP. > >VFP's language is riddled with the curse of 'legacy'. This is just one >thing that drags the language down. There are also many, many >frustrations and limitations that can not easily be worked around in >VFP. One in particular, is the flashing of images with alpha >transparency information(png) when lockscreen is set to false. Having >not control of the lower level GDI/GDIplus functions used to draw the >screen, this is an un-solvable problem. > > > > advantages of computers. There are literally billions of people out > > there, mostly relatively poor, with a growing appetite for machines that > > we take for granted. As the market extends, the favorites are going to > > be products that deliver the best value, and nothing on the market says > > "value" better then VFP (the genre). > >In many of these countries, all the products are 'free'... Hence, they >end up with what's popular. Most certainly not VFP(though there are >clear exceptions, of course). > > > > And that's just where the genre stands today. Imagine it being even > > better? > >It's dying. xbase is a file-based RDBMS. The years of file-based >RDBMS's ruling supreme are far behind us. We're in the time of >server-based RDBMS's. > > >-- >Derek > > [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech ** 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.
