Well it's a Friday morning and the guys in the office are chatting about
life after VFP. I was wondering what languages people are considering
to EXPAND to as part of their dev work?
So far I have seen the following crop up...
1) VFP 9 & Sedna
People seem as though they are going to push it past the MS support
date. However there is no guarantee that VFP will continue to work on
OS's after MS start patching things and release new OS's.
2) MS .NET
Keep on the MS ship? Yes I know there are projects that may allow you
to run these programmes on Linux but do they work? And is there another
EULA waiting to happen?
3) Dabo (Python)
Ok, probably the best thing here maybe? Couple of fears though. The
first being that really if you are going to do this you must know how to
program in python (no brainer really) and understand how that works.
What happens if Paul and Ed mysteriously get run over by Steve Balmer?
Will the project continue or will it die?
4) REALBasic
Ok, I don't know much about this, but it seems to keep popping up over
and over again on these boards. Is this another VFP waiting to happen?
Are they likely to get brought up by the big boys, consumed and then not
supported in order to move people across to their .Nets?
What other serious contenders are people looking at to move to as their
main language of choice?
Cheers for now...
Tristan Leask
Software Developer
Marine Software Ltd
trgl@marinesoftware.co.uk
www.marinesoftware.co.uk
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An outline of the VFS routemap for the next 5 years... Note that this
was decided on last year based on planned future markets and is not a
reflection of the recent announcement.
VFP 9 & Sedna for the next few years (can't just dump over a million
lines of code), with a review to move this app to c# in 2010.
Other projects underway in c# with the Castle assemblies.
--
Regards
Michael.
michael@foxpro.co.uk
Like you we have a big investment in VFP. So we'll be sticking with it
for as long as feasible (which I suspect will be quite a long time - one
thing MS have always been good with, that we tend to take for granted,
is backwards compatibility). I give it minimum 5 years, maybe 10+
Gradual move towards Python / Dabo The attraction here (apart from Ed,
who does look nice in a dress so I'm told <g>) is that it can handle web
apps and desktop and is cross platform.
Tristan Leask wrote:
> Well it's a Friday morning and the guys in the office are chatting about
> life after VFP. I was wondering what languages people are considering
> to EXPAND to as part of their dev work?
--
Cheers
============
Brian Abbott
============
-----Opprinnelig melding-----
Fra: profox-bounces@leafe.com [mailto:profox-bounces@leafe.com] PÃÂ¥ vegne av Michael Hawksworth
< VFP 9 & Sedna for the next few years (can't just dump over a million
lines of code) >
Personally, I'm very excited to see what will come out of the effort from eTechnologica.net and their VFP --> .NET compiler. Will it be too little too late, or salvation?
Eyvind.
Brian Abbott wrote:
> Gradual move towards Python / Dabo The attraction here (apart from Ed,
> who does look nice in a dress so I'm told <g>) is that it can handle web
> apps and desktop and is cross platform.
>
Ed -- please comment on this. Is it for web apps as well?
--
Michael J. Babcock, MCP
MB Software Solutions, LLC
http://mbsoftwaresolutions.com
"Work smarter, not harder, with MBSS custom software solutions!"
Dabo isn't, but Python has several frameworks that handle this.
MB Software Solutions wrote:
> Brian Abbott wrote:
>> Gradual move towards Python / Dabo The attraction here (apart from Ed,
>> who does look nice in a dress so I'm told <g>) is that it can handle web
>> apps and desktop and is cross platform.
>>
>
> Ed -- please comment on this. Is it for web apps as well?
>
--
Cheers
============
Brian Abbott
============
Tristan Leask wrote:
> 1) VFP 9 & Sedna
> People seem as though they are going to push it past the MS support
> date. However there is no guarantee that VFP will continue to work on
> OS's after MS start patching things and release new OS's.
>
Will be developing in it as long as there is development to do. Which
will be a long time.
> 2) MS .NET
> Keep on the MS ship? Yes I know there are projects that may allow you
> to run these programmes on Linux but do they work? And is there another
> EULA waiting to happen?
>
Mono works to an extent, and will get better. .NET is still
realistically Windows-based though, for the forseeable future. Things
like the whole ADO.NET and Windows Forms areas are not easy to make
cross-platform.
> 3) Dabo (Python)
> Ok, probably the best thing here maybe? Couple of fears though. The
> first being that really if you are going to do this you must know how to
> program in python (no brainer really) and understand how that works.
> What happens if Paul and Ed mysteriously get run over by Steve Balmer?
> Will the project continue or will it die?
>
>
Python is going nowhere (I mean it's not going to disappear). Personally
I have issues with GUI-based apps based on cross-platform languages like
Python and Java, insofar as they look terrible compared to what you can
do with native controls, although this situation is always improving.
Also, I haven't seen an IDE that can compare in RAD terms to either
Visual Studio or VFP. I can develop a whole web-based app in ASP.NET
without having to see any HTML. Which suits me fine.
I am basically entirely dictated to by what my customers want to see,
and at the minute that's VFP and C#. If they start wanting Python on
Linux, I'll be doing that too. I have no particular evangelical zeal for
any platform.
On Mar 23, 2007, at 7:07 AM, Brian Abbott wrote:
> Dabo isn't, but Python has several frameworks that handle this.
That's right. And since Dabo uses a 3-tier design, you only need to
rewrite the GUI.
-- Ed Leafe
Well, their .Net Extender has saved me hours of work so far so I'm
rather upbeat about them at the moment.
--
Regards
Michael.
michael@foxpro.co.uk
On Mar 23, 2007, at 7:21 AM, Alan Bourke wrote:
> Python is going nowhere (I mean it's not going to disappear).
> Personally
> I have issues with GUI-based apps based on cross-platform languages
> like
> Python and Java, insofar as they look terrible compared to what you
> can
> do with native controls, although this situation is always improving.
Try again.
Dabo uses the wxPython GUI toolkit, which is based on the C++
toolkit called 'wxWidgets'. From their home page:
"wxWidgets lets developers create applications for Win32, Mac OS X,
GTK+, X11, Motif, WinCE, and more using one codebase. It can be used
from languages such as C++, Python, Perl, and C#/.NET. Unlike other
cross-platform toolkits, wxWidgets applications look and feel native.
This is because wxWidgets uses the platform's own native controls
rather than emulating them. It's also extensive, free, open-source,
and mature."
IOW, you want a button, you use the platform's API to draw a button.
You want a tree, you use the platform's API to create a tree. No
faking it; no approximations... because they *are* native controls.
If you have some bizarre XP theme or Gtk theme installed, an app
written in wxPython will use that theme, since it isn't drawing the
controls itself.
-- Ed Leafe