Re: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

2019-03-20 Thread Koen Piller 
Johan
Will you post a confirmation when you Will show a demo at the next aToutFox
conference here? Or should I monitor aToutFrance?
Regards
Koen

Op wo 20 mrt. 2019 om 14:16 schreef Johan Nel 

> Hi Kurt,
>
> Sorry for not responding earlier. But here goes.  I am a X# user.  Yes
> be careful of them using the interview as cheap "consultation"...
>
> On 2019/03/20 07:45, Kurt at VR-FX wrote:
> > So as some of you may already know, I had a first interview for a
> > programmer job at UCLA. The second interview is coming up.
> > They did not bring up things like Lianja, XoJo, or X# the open source
> > X-base language.
> > There was also some recent discussion on X# which looked like a
> > potentially great option. But, I heard that via the last posting - the
> > FoxPro version of the code wasn't really ready yet!
>
> FoxPro experts are already working behind the scene in a project I
> initiated after identifying Fox developers I believe is suitable to
> demystify the VFP IDE repo and reproduce it in a X# readable text
> format.  From this format we busy to recreate it with a VFPTransporter,
> similar to the VOTransporter that was created to move Visual Objects
> code to X#, into a Visual Studio solution and XIDE repo.  We think it
> might be possible to convert the Fox Screen designer straight into a
> WinForm, Menu to MenuStrip, etc. Fox command translations will be a
> combination of the X# DevTeam adding support for these unrecognized
> commands in X#, #commands in a (VFP.xh) for the X# pre-proccessor to
> translate, or hard code Translaters in the Transporter for difficult
> pieces of VFP code. We quite excited, VFP users assisting and I, as part
> of this community initiative joint venture between VFP and X#, probably
> a first in the XBase world.  We hope to have something ready that can be
> demonstrated at the French Fox conference atoutfox in May and progress
> at Fox conferences later in the year. If we achieve the goal, you
> obviously need to learn the .NET way of doing stuff and get an
> understanding of the X# syntax to open up the world of .NET consumption,
> it is huge.  Any code written in a .NET language you can use as if
> written in X#.  Have a class in a c#/VB.NET assembly, no sweat just add
> a reference and use it.  Want to add new features to this class just
> create a new class inheriting from the c# class. Done, use it in your code.
>
> Watch this space!
>
> Johan Nel
> Friend of X# (FOX) member.
>
>
[excessive quoting removed by server]

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Re: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

2019-03-20 Thread Johan Nel 

Hi Kurt,

Sorry for not responding earlier. But here goes.  I am a X# user.  Yes 
be careful of them using the interview as cheap "consultation"...


On 2019/03/20 07:45, Kurt at VR-FX wrote:
So as some of you may already know, I had a first interview for a 
programmer job at UCLA. The second interview is coming up.
They did not bring up things like Lianja, XoJo, or X# the open source 
X-base language.
There was also some recent discussion on X# which looked like a 
potentially great option. But, I heard that via the last posting - the 
FoxPro version of the code wasn't really ready yet!


FoxPro experts are already working behind the scene in a project I 
initiated after identifying Fox developers I believe is suitable to 
demystify the VFP IDE repo and reproduce it in a X# readable text 
format.  From this format we busy to recreate it with a VFPTransporter, 
similar to the VOTransporter that was created to move Visual Objects 
code to X#, into a Visual Studio solution and XIDE repo.  We think it 
might be possible to convert the Fox Screen designer straight into a 
WinForm, Menu to MenuStrip, etc. Fox command translations will be a 
combination of the X# DevTeam adding support for these unrecognized 
commands in X#, #commands in a (VFP.xh) for the X# pre-proccessor to 
translate, or hard code Translaters in the Transporter for difficult 
pieces of VFP code. We quite excited, VFP users assisting and I, as part 
of this community initiative joint venture between VFP and X#, probably 
a first in the XBase world.  We hope to have something ready that can be 
demonstrated at the French Fox conference atoutfox in May and progress 
at Fox conferences later in the year. If we achieve the goal, you 
obviously need to learn the .NET way of doing stuff and get an 
understanding of the X# syntax to open up the world of .NET consumption, 
it is huge.  Any code written in a .NET language you can use as if 
written in X#.  Have a class in a c#/VB.NET assembly, no sweat just add 
a reference and use it.  Want to add new features to this class just 
create a new class inheriting from the c# class. Done, use it in your code.


Watch this space!

Johan Nel
Friend of X# (FOX) member.


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Re: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

2019-03-20 Thread Kurt at VR-FX 

Oops! Sorry about that...

On 3/20/2019 8:43 AM, Thierry Nivelet wrote:

> Fox-in-Cloud

no dash, plain single word "FoxInCloud"… makes Google searches easier!

;-)

Thierry N.



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Re: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

2019-03-20 Thread Kurt at VR-FX 

NICE!


:-)

On 3/20/2019 7:56 AM, Ted Roche wrote:

On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 10:50 AM Kurt at VR-FX  wrote:



WOW - am going to reply again momentarily - after I get some BFast!


I'm pretty sure FoxPro is up to JFast!

(Inside joke for the old, old, OLD Foxers!)




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Re: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

2019-03-20 Thread Kurt at VR-FX 
Ted - I must say - your answer is Brilliant! Although it may have seemed 
obvious to you - it wasn't obvious to me. However, I was feeling a LOT 
of pressure to give them the kind of response they requested - and now I 
know WHY - since I was given a nearly impossible task. As you stated, 
one can NOT truly make a reasonable suggestion without thorough research 
and review!


Thank you Ed & Stephen for your corroboration - I really appreciate it.

On 3/20/2019 4:28 AM, Ted Roche wrote:

On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 1:45 AM Kurt at VR-FX  wrote:


  The second interview is coming up, it's supposed
to be this Thursday, but I might try to postpone until Friday. Too much
stuff going on in my life lately, including doing 2 different part time
jobs and an extended relative who passed away recently,


I'm sympathetic to your situation, but you don't want the wrong interviewer
hearing that you're too busy babysitting parrots to interview for a job.
That's harsh, and you might not want to work for such a jerk, but you don't
want to raise red flags, or even questions, during the interview process...


Actually - during the interv iew process they did ask me what I am 
currently doing. And, they actually got a kick out of the bird hotel & 
my teaching work. But, truth is - its the family death that's also 
having a impact. And, the boss suggested postponing the interview - and 
I originally said no.




OTOH, you don't want to work for jerks, either. OTOOH, they're paying
peanuts and desperate for Fox expertise. Your call,


Your Jerks comment is funny - and I can understand - since the pay is so 
low. But, I'm not going to say anymore on that topic.


Am rushing to make these replies - then shower & get the hell out of 
here - since I have a long drive to go between SF & SD - and a deadline 
about 7pm!


-K-







It looks like UCLA really wants to move away from Foxpro, as they know
it's a dead language. But, they want to move to something similar to
VFP.


And that's why they are hiring you. I you have an answer during the
interview, you'd be jumping the gun.  "If all you have is a hammer,
everything looks like a nail." Your job should be to learn the app, learn
what it interfaces with, what it gets for inputs and what it needs to
output (PDF, JPEG, XML, JSON, CSV, EBCDIC?) and determine the optimal tool
to do all of that and hopefully minimize the transition. It may be really
easy to migrate the app to FoxXYZ, but if that can't do what they need,
that's useless.

A 30 year's experienced app developer may have some real legacy stuff in
their app, and conversion can be a large undertaking. Along with a parallel
investigation of what the client needs the app to do is an audit of what
the application already does, Whil's Developer Guide went into this in some
detail, and I presented a series of lectures with checklists and software
for an initial audit.

So, the answer to the question on what they should do is to ask what they
want, and what they have? How many lines of code? How many tables? How many
fields? Where's the ERD? How many output documents, reports? Where does the
data come from? Where does it go? What's the IT infrastructure? What kind
of data servers do they support? What kind of maintenance windows are
allowed? Where are the users? How do they access the data: PCs, laptops on
the road, tablets, phones, embedded in other services? How responsive does
the app have to be? What happens in case of failure? What's the backup
strategy? What's the disaster recovery plan?

I suspect its also because the 1 and only programmer there, who's

been there for like 30 years and may be retiring soon - doesn't want to
learn something Totally new. And, also wants to minimize the transition!


It's likely your job is to learn everything the old Obi-Wan knows and
become the new master. Realistically (and perhaps this isn't an interview
topic), you'll keep the old app running for some time as you transition the
data model, the business model, the services model and the interface(s) to
the new platform.



They are asking me to propose what I think is the best option.


When a consultant tells me they have the solution to all of my business
needs by replacing a 30-year-old system with whatever they are selling, on
the first meeting, sight-unseen, I would be rightfully skeptical.

The right answer is that they need to let you learn the app and research
the right solution. If you can convince them you are knowlegeable about
what is available, and what the issues are that need to be addressed in a
migration, then they should hire you to do your job.

There are a lot of good resources out there, like this list, the FoxWiki,
books, whitepapers, but you will need to do the footwork. See if you can
convince them to pay you to do that.



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Re: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

2019-03-20 Thread Thierry Nivelet 

> Fox-in-Cloud

no dash, plain single word "FoxInCloud"… makes Google searches easier!

;-)

Thierry N.


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Re: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

2019-03-20 Thread Jean Laeremans 
lol. Takes me back.

On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 3:57 PM Ted Roche  wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 10:50 AM Kurt at VR-FX  wrote:
>
>
> > WOW - am going to reply again momentarily - after I get some BFast!
> >
>
> I'm pretty sure FoxPro is up to JFast!
>
> (Inside joke for the old, old, OLD Foxers!)
>
>
> --
> Ted Roche
> Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
> http://www.tedroche.com
>
>
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Re: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

2019-03-20 Thread Ted Roche 
On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 10:50 AM Kurt at VR-FX  wrote:


> WOW - am going to reply again momentarily - after I get some BFast!
>

I'm pretty sure FoxPro is up to JFast!

(Inside joke for the old, old, OLD Foxers!)


-- 
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com


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Re: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

2019-03-20 Thread Kurt at VR-FX 
Yes - indeed he does - its one of the reasons that I kinda directed my 
questions to him and pointed out his name. And, as I knew he would - he 
was one of the first to respond!


Thank you Vince & Thierry for your replies. As for the other replies - 
WOW - am going to reply again momentarily - after I get some BFast!


-K-

On 3/20/2019 7:30 AM, Vince Teachout wrote:

On 03/20/19 1:45 AM, Kurt at VR-FX wrote:
I know that Fox-in-Cloud even offers a type of Conversion Assistant - 
which looks really Great! But, once its converted and running in the 
cloud - I'm assuming that making updates to the system actually means 
programming in something that is not actually FoxPro - as I think its 
Javascript & HTML. But, I could be wrong - and am sure Thierry will 
correct me.



I don't actually use Fox-in-Cloud, but doesn't the developer often 
post in here?  Or you could ask them directly on their website?


Good luck!  Knock 'em dead!




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Re: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

2019-03-20 Thread Vince Teachout 

On 03/20/19 1:45 AM, Kurt at VR-FX wrote:
I know that Fox-in-Cloud even offers a type of Conversion Assistant - 
which looks really Great! But, once its converted and running in the 
cloud - I'm assuming that making updates to the system actually means 
programming in something that is not actually FoxPro - as I think its 
Javascript & HTML. But, I could be wrong - and am sure Thierry will 
correct me.



I don't actually use Fox-in-Cloud, but doesn't the developer often post 
in here?  Or you could ask them directly on their website?


Good luck!  Knock 'em dead!




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Re: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

2019-03-20 Thread Stephen Russell 
I agree with all of your points, Ted.  They want to move to something and
they are not forthcoming in the entirety of the why change.

Is it to get rid of the other guy who may be a great coder as well as a
great PITA?  Is there a new directive within all of IT to embrace modern
technology?

Are they really looking for an Architect to lead the product into Angular
and python type of app that they can point to?

On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 8:30 AM Ted Roche  wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 7:28 AM Ted Roche  wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >> They are asking me to propose what I think is the best option.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> And I want to go back and hammer on this point one more time: they are
> asking you to tell them, for free, what they should spend the next decade
> doing. They are asking for consulting for free. They may not even have a
> guy that's retiring, they just want 30 experts to come in and tell them,
> FOR FREE, what they should be doing next. Then, they can send the
> 30-years-experience guy to school for the new thing, and look how much
> money they save!
>
> No work on spec.
>
> YOUR job , in the interview, is to convince them that you are the person
> qualified to work for them to answer that question. You show them that by
> asking more questions about the application than they can answer to show
> that you see the need to plan ahead, analyse the situation, research and
> design the optimal solution. Prove that you are qualified in the interview.
> Then, they can hire you to solve their problems.
>
> As a consultant, I have had to fall back to the line that "I can only give
> advice as part of client-consultant contractual relationship."
>
> --
> Ted Roche
> Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
> http://www.tedroche.com
>
>
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Re: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

2019-03-20 Thread Stephen Russell 
This sounds like a set-up type of question.

I would go in with the knowledge that they want to step away from VFP.  I
wouldn't give them a "with what" before you had the time to learn what it
does as well as what the owners want it to do.  This position is in
academia and they have an attitude about how things should go.  Are they
looking to go totally open source and do they want to operate in the cloud?

My take on this is that they don't a rats ass if the program is in another
version of X-Base, they just want it to work.

There should be no problem for making the interview.


On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 12:45 AM Kurt at VR-FX  wrote:

> Hello there folks,
> I'm looking to get some feedback from the hive mind of this group. And,
> I will admit, I'm doing this kind of last minute. Too many things going
> on lately, and I have not had a chance to do my true due diligence! Such
> as thorough research via prior postings in this forum.
>
> So as some of you may already know, I had a first interview for a
> programmer job at UCLA. The second interview is coming up, it's supposed
> to be this Thursday, but I might try to postpone until Friday. Too much
> stuff going on in my life lately, including doing 2 different part time
> jobs and an extended relative who passed away recently, that's the
> reason I'm going down to LA for an in-person interview, since the last
> interview I did via Skype.
> It looks like UCLA really wants to move away from Foxpro, as they know
> it's a dead language. But, they want to move to something similar to
> VFP. I suspect its also because the 1 and only programmer there, who's
> been there for like 30 years and may be retiring soon - doesn't want to
> learn something Totally new. And, also wants to minimize the transition!
> They are asking me to propose what I think is the best option. They have
> mentioned several options such as Fox-in-Cloud, the Alpha software, and
> even Servoy. They did not bring up things like Lianja, XoJo, or X# the
> open source X-base language.
>
> I know that Fox-in-Cloud even offers a type of Conversion Assistant -
> which looks really Great! But, once its converted and running in the
> cloud - I'm assuming that making updates to the system actually means
> programming in something that is not actually FoxPro - as I think its
> Javascript & HTML. But, I could be wrong - and am sure Thierry will
> correct me.
>
> There was also some recent discussion on X# which looked like a
> potentially great option. But, I heard that via the last posting - the
> FoxPro version of the code wasn't really ready yet!
>
> They also told me that they have already been working with Alpha SW -
> and in discussions with them for several months. Which makes me think
> they are already leaning towards Alpha. A quick review of old postings
> in this forum did not show a lot of discussion or users of Alpha. It
> would really be great to hear from some Alpha users!
>
> Anyway - any and all input would be greatly appreciated. I've seen
> Numerous discussions about a number of these technologies here in the
> forum over the years. But, honestly - I never truly got involved with
> any of them - until NOW!
>
> Regards,
> Kurt
>
>
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Re: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

2019-03-20 Thread Ted Roche 
On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 7:28 AM Ted Roche  wrote:

>
>
>> They are asking me to propose what I think is the best option.
>
>
>
>
And I want to go back and hammer on this point one more time: they are
asking you to tell them, for free, what they should spend the next decade
doing. They are asking for consulting for free. They may not even have a
guy that's retiring, they just want 30 experts to come in and tell them,
FOR FREE, what they should be doing next. Then, they can send the
30-years-experience guy to school for the new thing, and look how much
money they save!

No work on spec.

YOUR job , in the interview, is to convince them that you are the person
qualified to work for them to answer that question. You show them that by
asking more questions about the application than they can answer to show
that you see the need to plan ahead, analyse the situation, research and
design the optimal solution. Prove that you are qualified in the interview.
Then, they can hire you to solve their problems.

As a consultant, I have had to fall back to the line that "I can only give
advice as part of client-consultant contractual relationship."

-- 
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com


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Re: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

2019-03-20 Thread Ed Leafe 
On Mar 20, 2019, at 6:28 AM, Ted Roche  wrote:
> 
>> It looks like UCLA really wants to move away from Foxpro, as they know
>> it's a dead language. But, they want to move to something similar to
>> VFP.
> 
> And that's why they are hiring you. I you have an answer during the
> interview, you'd be jumping the gun.  "If all you have is a hammer,
> everything looks like a nail." Your job should be to learn the app, learn
> what it interfaces with, what it gets for inputs and what it needs to
> output (PDF, JPEG, XML, JSON, CSV, EBCDIC?) and determine the optimal tool
> to do all of that and hopefully minimize the transition. It may be really
> easy to migrate the app to FoxXYZ, but if that can't do what they need,
> that's useless.

I would echo everything Ted brings up. A 30-year-old app will have many layers 
of functionality, and probably does a bunch of things that most people who use 
it don’t know about, but one or two people absolutely rely upon.

The main perspective I would add is that you should ask them if they want to 
keep it as it has been, or if they want to create something that will last for 
the next 30 years. During my career as a consultant, there were many times that 
I was brought in to make a particular change the customer wanted. Instead of 
just saying “Sure, I can do that!”, I would probe a bit. I’d ask them *why* 
they feel they need this change. I would ask them if there were any other parts 
of the system that they felt didn’t do just what they needed. Once you get them 
talking, listen! They thought they knew what they wanted, but almost always I 
was able to discern their true needs. When a plan to implement those needs was 
presented to them, they were usually so excited that any questions about my 
rate were forgotten.

And I’m sure you know what I’m going to suggest next: if they truly want an app 
that will take them through the next 30 years, don’t keep it in VFP. If they 
think finding people who know VFP is hard now… well, the situation isn’t going 
to get any better over time. And it would be unethical for you to advise them 
on a path that may be good for you but hurt them in the long run.

To sum up: tell them you will need to take the time to learn just what is 
needed from the app, both in current functionality and future capabilities, and 
then and only then could you suggest a path forward. That path should involve a 
programming language (or languages) that have a strong likelihood of being 
active for the next decade or two.

Take this as a personal opportunity to learn and grow your skillset. I never 
get tired of learning a new language or a new way of doing things. That, to me, 
is the hallmark of a true developer.


-- Ed Leafe






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Re: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

2019-03-20 Thread Ted Roche 
On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 1:45 AM Kurt at VR-FX  wrote:

>  The second interview is coming up, it's supposed
> to be this Thursday, but I might try to postpone until Friday. Too much
> stuff going on in my life lately, including doing 2 different part time
> jobs and an extended relative who passed away recently,


I'm sympathetic to your situation, but you don't want the wrong interviewer
hearing that you're too busy babysitting parrots to interview for a job.
That's harsh, and you might not want to work for such a jerk, but you don't
want to raise red flags, or even questions, during the interview process,
OTOH, you don't want to work for jerks, either. OTOOH, they're paying
peanuts and desperate for Fox expertise. Your call,



> It looks like UCLA really wants to move away from Foxpro, as they know
> it's a dead language. But, they want to move to something similar to
> VFP.


And that's why they are hiring you. I you have an answer during the
interview, you'd be jumping the gun.  "If all you have is a hammer,
everything looks like a nail." Your job should be to learn the app, learn
what it interfaces with, what it gets for inputs and what it needs to
output (PDF, JPEG, XML, JSON, CSV, EBCDIC?) and determine the optimal tool
to do all of that and hopefully minimize the transition. It may be really
easy to migrate the app to FoxXYZ, but if that can't do what they need,
that's useless.

A 30 year's experienced app developer may have some real legacy stuff in
their app, and conversion can be a large undertaking. Along with a parallel
investigation of what the client needs the app to do is an audit of what
the application already does, Whil's Developer Guide went into this in some
detail, and I presented a series of lectures with checklists and software
for an initial audit.

So, the answer to the question on what they should do is to ask what they
want, and what they have? How many lines of code? How many tables? How many
fields? Where's the ERD? How many output documents, reports? Where does the
data come from? Where does it go? What's the IT infrastructure? What kind
of data servers do they support? What kind of maintenance windows are
allowed? Where are the users? How do they access the data: PCs, laptops on
the road, tablets, phones, embedded in other services? How responsive does
the app have to be? What happens in case of failure? What's the backup
strategy? What's the disaster recovery plan?

I suspect its also because the 1 and only programmer there, who's
> been there for like 30 years and may be retiring soon - doesn't want to
> learn something Totally new. And, also wants to minimize the transition!
>

It's likely your job is to learn everything the old Obi-Wan knows and
become the new master. Realistically (and perhaps this isn't an interview
topic), you'll keep the old app running for some time as you transition the
data model, the business model, the services model and the interface(s) to
the new platform.


> They are asking me to propose what I think is the best option.


When a consultant tells me they have the solution to all of my business
needs by replacing a 30-year-old system with whatever they are selling, on
the first meeting, sight-unseen, I would be rightfully skeptical.

The right answer is that they need to let you learn the app and research
the right solution. If you can convince them you are knowlegeable about
what is available, and what the issues are that need to be addressed in a
migration, then they should hire you to do your job.

There are a lot of good resources out there, like this list, the FoxWiki,
books, whitepapers, but you will need to do the footwork. See if you can
convince them to pay you to do that.

-- 
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com


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Re: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

2019-03-20 Thread Alan Bourke 
> It looks like UCLA really wants to move away from Foxpro, as they know 
> it's a dead language. But, they want to move to something similar to 
> VFP.

If they want to move to something similar to VFP and minimise the transition 
then they might as well stay on VFP and possibly FoxInCloud. 

Move away from VFP or minimise transition, pick one. Even something like Lianja 
which supports VFP syntax to a large extent will involve significant retooling. 
X# isn't there yet for VFP syntax. Servoy is a Java web stack that you code in 
JavaScript. XoJo is BASIC-like. Don't forget LiveCode while we're at it. 

-- 
  Alan Bourke
  alanpbourke (at) fastmail (dot) fm

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Re: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

2019-03-20 Thread Thierry Nivelet 

Hi Kurt,

"they know it's a dead language":

- technically false: even if Microsoft no longer provides extensions, 
many 3rd party initiatives keep it alive: west-wind, VFPx, VFPA, 
FoxInCloud, and many others. VFP remains competitive on desktop and web.


- humanly: hen and egg story and self-fulfilling prophecy; the more we 
advocate on how far we can expand the existing VFP code base to new 
horizons (web, 64 bits, etc.) the more interest we can grow on VFP. The 
more we internalize that we're dying, the more likely it'll happen.


About FoxInCloud,

"Conversion Assistant" is in fact an "Adaptation Assistant" (FAA): with 
FoxInCloud the same code base can be deployed on either the desktop or 
the Web, just by adapting the existing code base with the help and 
guidance of FAA (and our support of course)


"making updates to the system actually means programming in something 
that is not actually FoxPro"


FoxInCloud runs the application on the server (reason why the code is 
adapted), and replaces the VFP UI by a HTML/CSS/JS user interface, tied 
to the server by the user events (click, valid, etc.) through AJAX.


- Adding new functionalities generally requires some VFP development 
that you can test in desktop mode before moving to the Web.


- Improving the user interface (eg. adding features that VFP does not 
support such as animations, rounded corners, gradients, etc.) requires 
CSS/JS coding that you can implement in an application-wide file (css 
and/or js) or encapsulate within your VFP classes.


Thierry Nivelet
FoxInCloud
Give your VFP app a second life in the cloud
http://foxincloud.com/

VisitFoxInCloud Blog  
WatchFoxInCloud Marketing Videos  

WatchFoxInCloud Technical Videos  

Stay tuned onFoxInCloud Roadmap  
Learnhow to use FoxInCloud  
DownloadFoxInCloud Adaptation Assistant    
for free

Le 20/03/2019 à 06:45, Kurt at VR-FX a écrit :

Hello there folks,
I'm looking to get some feedback from the hive mind of this group. 
And, I will admit, I'm doing this kind of last minute. Too many things 
going on lately, and I have not had a chance to do my true due 
diligence! Such as thorough research via prior postings in this forum.


So as some of you may already know, I had a first interview for a 
programmer job at UCLA. The second interview is coming up, it's 
supposed to be this Thursday, but I might try to postpone until 
Friday. Too much stuff going on in my life lately, including doing 2 
different part time jobs and an extended relative who passed away 
recently, that's the reason I'm going down to LA for an in-person 
interview, since the last interview I did via Skype.
It looks like UCLA really wants to move away from Foxpro, as they know 
it's a dead language. But, they want to move to something similar to 
VFP. I suspect its also because the 1 and only programmer there, who's 
been there for like 30 years and may be retiring soon - doesn't want 
to learn something Totally new. And, also wants to minimize the 
transition! They are asking me to propose what I think is the best 
option. They have mentioned several options such as Fox-in-Cloud, the 
Alpha software, and even Servoy. They did not bring up things like 
Lianja, XoJo, or X# the open source X-base language.


I know that Fox-in-Cloud even offers a type of Conversion Assistant - 
which looks really Great! But, once its converted and running in the 
cloud - I'm assuming that making updates to the system actually means 
programming in something that is not actually FoxPro - as I think its 
Javascript & HTML. But, I could be wrong - and am sure Thierry will 
correct me.


There was also some recent discussion on X# which looked like a 
potentially great option. But, I heard that via the last posting - the 
FoxPro version of the code wasn't really ready yet!


They also told me that they have already been working with Alpha SW - 
and in discussions with them for several months. Which makes me think 
they are already leaning towards Alpha. A quick review of old postings 
in this forum did not show a lot of discussion or users of Alpha. It 
would really be great to hear from some Alpha users!


Anyway - any and all input would be greatly appreciated. I've seen 
Numerous discussions about a number of these technologies here in the 
forum over the years. But, honestly - I never truly got involved with 
any of them - until NOW!


Regards,
Kurt



[excessive quoting removed by server]

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This

RE: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

2019-03-20 Thread Dave Crozier 
Kurt,
I used Alpha 4 and Alpha 5 quite a lot about 12-15 years ago and it was a good 
solid XBase RAD platform but limiting in what it could do programming wise. 
Looking at their website it has obviously matured a great deal, the emphasis 
being on device independent application development. Well worth a look I think 
and must admit I am tempted myself!!

Dave Crozier
Software Development Manager
Flexipol Packaging Ltd.

﴾⚆ᨎ⚆﴿



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-Original Message-
From: ProFox  On Behalf Of Kurt at VR-FX
Sent: 20 March 2019 05:45
To: ProFox Email List 
Subject: A FoxPro Transition @ UCLA...

Hello there folks,
I'm looking to get some feedback from the hive mind of this group. And, I will 
admit, I'm doing this kind of last minute. Too many things going on lately, and 
I have not had a chance to do my true due diligence! Such as thorough research 
via prior postings in this forum.

So as some of you may already know, I had a first interview for a programmer 
job at UCLA. The second interview is coming up, it's supposed to be this 
Thursday, but I might try to postpone until Friday. Too much stuff going on in 
my life lately, including doing 2 different part time jobs and an extended 
relative who passed away recently, that's the reason I'm going down to LA for 
an in-person interview, since the last interview I did via Skype.
It looks like UCLA really wants to move away from Foxpro, as they know it's a 
dead language. But, they want to move to something similar to VFP. I suspect 
its also because the 1 and only programmer there, who's been there for like 30 
years and may be retiring soon - doesn't want to learn something Totally new. 
And, also wants to minimize the transition! 
They are asking me to propose what I think is the best option. They have 
mentioned several options such as Fox-in-Cloud, the Alpha software, and even 
Servoy. They did not bring up things like Lianja, XoJo, or X# the open source 
X-base language.

I know that Fox-in-Cloud even offers a type of Conversion Assistant - which 
looks really Great! But, once its converted and running in the cloud - I'm 
assuming that making updates to the system actually means programming in 
something that is not actually FoxPro - as I think its Javascript & HTML. But, 
I could be wrong - and am sure Thierry will correct me.

There was also some recent discussion on X# which looked like a potentially 
great option. But, I heard that via the last posting - the FoxPro version of 
the code wasn't really ready yet!

They also told me that they have already been working with Alpha SW - and in 
discussions with them for several months. Which makes me