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1. Comment - Visual FoxPro 9 Goes Gold

   (Jan 6, 2005 - 12:44 PM)

   As Mark Twain is supposed to have said "The news of my demise are somewhat exaggerated" or words to that effect. The same could very well be said for VFP.
   
   Lot's of people have tried to talk VFP into the ground for years, and unfortunately MS has done little or nothing to dissuade us from the notion that VFP is a niche product that's on it's way out.
   
   More's the pity, because it makes it very hard for developers to convince customers why they should go with a, outside the circle of the blessed 100 000 or so, virtually unknown product. Removing it from Visual Studio .Net was a unfortunate signal to send, and in my opinion marginalized the product even further.
   Enter the downward spiral...
   
   I know for a fact, that even the staff at Microsoft Denmark barely know of it's existence, but I am equally convinced that, if the marketing people at Redmont only would tout it as they do with Access or VB, nobody would be speculating about it's untimely death.
   
   While it will not do everything you ever wanted to do on a computer, it's, shortcomings and all, still my develoment tool of choice for database development against client/server DB's, simply because it brings knew meaning to RAD and runs, well, like a Fox.
   
   VFP programmers have for years been programming OO code in a manner and style that VB or C# programmers still only dream about, and all of it without lots of incredibly stupid curly braces, semicolons and intricate syntax.
   
   I have not even seen VFP 9.0 yet, but I know Ken Levy to be a both bright and reasonable guy, and if he says it will fly, I'm confident that it will indeed do so.
   
   That said, a bit of passion in selling it, along with tight integration into Visual Studio .Net and it's myriad of classes, would surely help a long way towards keeping it around for a while.
   
   To the people who actually built the thing, my sincere congratulations and thanks. I'm very much looking forward to getting my copy.
   
   After the usual frustration and gnashing of teeth, I will, by the time SP1 comes along, as the saying goes, probably be loving it.