Re: Alternatives To Foxpro

In my opinion JavaScript is more appealing to young developers than learning .NET stuff. It really boils down to a nice looking front end "Javascript manipulating the DOM" making way better looking stuff than .NET generated stuff...

All we need is Javascript / Ajax / Json / and a backend database.. I use Wconnect for my backend.

Wconnect / Foxpro can pump out Json faster than anything else i've tried. I dont see and end to foxpro anytime soon.. It still blows the doors off anything else for string manipulation. The world is not moving in a .NET direction.. It's moving in a "Javascript client - Ajax - Json - Backend" direction. I'll use wconnect until it cant scale for what I need.. and I dont see that happening anytime soon.

Rick Strahl's wconnect Rocks!!!!!!!!! Thanks Rick

Exactly! Although I think Microsoft would mess up any JavaScript framework (like their own AJAX framework) and even if they didn't they probably wouldn't be trusted with it by the younger coders. MS does server side best in my estimation and that can play well in all these scenarios. Ever wonder why all of Microsoft's client side initiatives either fail or are abandoned??

And I think that .NET/C# is fine in these situations and will scale probably as good or better than anything out there on the server side. However, and I agree, it's overkill unless your in the top 5% of web traffic. For everything else, VFP, PHP, etc. would be fine.... (and yes, I know Facebook uses PHP - but they compile it to C for performance reasons...)

I agree with GloverL. I've been building most of me new apps with javascript frameworks.. jQuery... ExtJS 4.. ExtJS 4 Rocks! I think .Net is way overkill for most things. Microsoft is seeing the writing on the wall. With most of the Code being on the Client side... we just need a backend on the server.. wconnect is just fine for creating Json even classic ASP or PHP.. .Nets future may end like silverlight. Microsoft even brought back ODBC into the mix. Hopefully Microsoft comes out with a javascript framework like ExtJS4 and and IDE..

You're sure right there's nothing wrong with VFP compared to stuff that's out there. Just look at PHP - you could argue PHP is even MORE popular than C# or VB.NET pretty easily yet it's NOT based on the .NET Framework and it's not even 64-bit on Windows!!

COM still runs most everything especially at lower levels on Windows. The news of the death of all this including VFP has been pure FUD.

Most development will be done on the client going into the foreseeable future - stuff like jQuery, HTML 5 etc. This is pretty obvious in the market place and all you have to do is look at Windows 8. So it <i>doesn't matter</i> much on the server side what language you use, C# or VFP! They are interchangeable imo.

Hi all,

Over the last few years there have been many discussions to the eventual end of MS Visual Foxpro. There have been several projects sprung up that have attempted to either extend the life of VFP or become an alternative replacement. The replacements have either totally failed or do not resemble VFP in any such way.

The logical evolution for desktop development in Windows appears to be with little question the .NET framework. My biggest bugbear with this is that although I love C# as a language the closest language to VFP is VB.NET and to be honest doesn't come close.

Giving this some long thought I questioned why I would miss VFP. I have totally accepted .NET and C# yet something was missing. From time to time I end up cutting some VFP code for legacy systems that have not migrated yet and then it struck me. Its nothing more than the VFP language itself that I will miss, not VFP. Looking at the roots of this, VFP was based on the DBase language, my initial searches for VFP language alternatives proved pretty fruitless. I specifically wanted to find the language reincarnated in .NET, no joy.

I was so disheartened as I was coming to the realisation we may actually be seeing a death of a language. People could argue the langauge is outdated, but the truth is it isn't really. It's just a language and it can evolve sensibly like any other. There are many other successful dynamic languages like VFP about.

I then thought harder. VFP fell out with Ashton-Tate back in the day over the DBase langauge. If you look at this single fact, the VFP language is truely a Dbase language at its heart. This made me look, and what do you know, there it is, DBase. DBase appears to still exist and under what seems to be something close to its original company. The website is: http://www.dbase.com.

It appears the language still lives on in a more modern way. It is a shame it is not based on .NET, not sure if this is a disadvantage though. My biggest concern is why I have not picked up on this in any forums anywhere when people were looking for VFP alternatives? Is this purely on the basis of the history between VFP and DBase? You would think those days were gone? I'm interested in whether people even realised DBase even still existed? Whether or not I look at this any closer, I'm just humbled by the fact that we have not seen a death of a language. For me that would be a total tradgedy.

What are peoples thoughts on this?

Regards

Richard