General items related to Visual FoxPro
Craig Boyd has an excellent post titled Visual FoxPro Community Action on his blog, providing some great commentary and several references to a variety of VFP community resources.
A brief clip:
“As a community, we can do more in 1 year than Microsoft could do in 10 to improve the state of our beloved product.“
I just got an email from FoxPro Advisor Update, and as I scrolled down the message I saw a “sponsored by” section that kind of threw me for a loop.
Here’s a snippet of the ad:
FoxPro Application Development for $12/hr
* Upgrade to FoxPro 9 or convert to .NET
* Web enable your applications
* Maintenance discounts available
* Over 15 years of custom software development
* Lower cost without sacrificing high quality
Luckily, I’m sure none of my clients receive FoxPro Advisor Update. In fact, most of them don’t know (and don’t really even seem to care) what language my applications are written with.
After my first glance at the ad, I thought, “How in the heck am I supposed to compete with ‘off-shoring specialists’ offering rock-bottom pricing?”
The answer? QUALITY.
Have you ever seen an app developed on the cheap by third-world ‘off-shoring specialists’? Though the ad mentions “lower cost without sacrificing high quality”, my experience has always been “You get what you pay for.”
Maybe I’m a bit dense today, but I just finished reading the “eagerly awaited, infamous” Visual FoxPro Roadmap, and I can only say, “Huh?”
Sedna (the code-name for the project to “expand on the ability of Visual FoxPro-based solutions to better integrate with other Microsoft products and technologies”) obviously is NOT going to be VFP 10 (it “requires” VFP 9).
In fact, I see nothing in this “definitive” Roadmap which suggests any further enhancements to VFP after SP1 and Sedna are released. In their effort to become more “transparent”, I’m personally a bit miffed about the cyclic references between the Roadmap and the VFP FAQ.
On the plus side, Ken’s June letter has the following entry:
.NET for Visual FoxPro Developers book online for free
The complete 500 page .NET for Visual FoxPro Developers book written by Kevin McNeish and edited by Cathi Gero is now online. This book has been made available through the cooperation between Hentzenwerke Publishing, Microsoft Corporation, and the book author Kevin McNeish.
Revised: OK, maybe I’m NOT dense. Maybe I’m just suffering from a bit of denial. I just read Craig Berntson’s blog entry about the Roadmap. For me, I think I’ll try to stick with VFP for another 10 years or so, and start “playing” with other tools for the future.