Over the last few weeks I have read postings and talked directly with developers who have speculated "what's next" for Visual FoxPro. Personally, I find it a time sink with no purpose, but recently I considered something I had not considered before.
In the past Microsoft has announced they were already working (whether design, prototypes, or actual builds) on the next version of VFP. These announcements came before or near the release of the current version. How many developers do you think looked at the current release and said: "I might as well wait for the next release since it will be even better"?
Now you and I know having the latest release has much to offer in productivity and what we can deliver to our customers, but I would hazard a guess that many developers think they can save a few hundred bucks and just wait it out for the next killer feature. Others are just satisfied with the status quo or cannot afford the cost of the upgrade, or the time to upgrade their applications.
I recently started at a new client who has a system developed in VFP 6. I was stepping through a debug scenario and opening some tables while he was looking over my shoulder. The developer nearly fell off his chair when he saw IntelliSense kick in with the list of tables after I typed in USE in the Command Window. I turned around and told him, you have not seen anything yet.
I believe this is the message we should be spreading. Don't worry so much about VFP X, check out VFP 9 and live the features that will make you life as a developer better, and the apps for your clients more impressive than ever.
1 Comments:
Great post, Rick. I agree completely. Your thoughts mirror mine in the March, 2005 FoxTalk editorial, which begins like this:
Almost two years after the release of VFP 8, Visual FoxPro 9.0 was released to manufacturing in December and is now available through retail channels as well as in MSDN subscriptions! As is usual in the Fox community, the announcement of VFP 9's release was met by a chorus of, "But what about the next version?"
Good grief. Get a grip, people. What comes next? Duh–get VFP 9 and use it!
BTW, the editor in me has to point out an interesting and funny ambiguity in your first paragraph (oops, should I have emailed you about it first?):
Over the last few weeks I have read postings and talked directly with developers who have speculated "what's next" for Visual FoxPro. Personally, I find it a time sink with no purpose...
I don't think you mean that Visual FoxPro is a time sink with no purpose. *gd&rvvf*
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