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.