Absolutely agree here, Ed. First .NET implementations were shitty and integrating VFP in CLR was too much of a hassle, or maybe not possible at all. The optional parameters didn't exist in C#, and I suspect that in VB they were actually implemented by overloading the method (just a wag).
Remember the so-called "VB6 Project Conversion wizard"? It was supposed to transform a VB6 project into a VB.NET project. It did that job, _somehow_. I tried that once and all I got was some forms and lots of "to do" comments directing me to various MS links that explained that some of the VBX controls need changes, other can't be ported at all and need rewrite. Well, as far as I am concerned, I would have preferred to have a partial port of VFP project to VFP.NET than having VFP dead now. Some would not agree with "dead" and I would like to explain my point of view. Although I am well aware about VFPX, I still consider that VFP is dead or dying because any VFPX addon would run on the existing VFP.exe code base. And as long that code base is not updated/upgraded, any addon will have the same fate. In other words: yes, I know we can write addons for report designer and use them. But we will never be able to do drill-down reports using VFP report designer. So if a customer requests that, I am forced to use something else, not VFP. Same thing happens if I need to join column headers two by two (Excel cell merge like). I hope I was clear in what I meant (my English sometimes is kind of rusty) - as long as VFP engine isn't updated, all we can do is to do some facelifting to existing VFP apps, but no fundamental changes. Have a look at th is screenshot: http://www.class-software.eu/screenshot.png Well, that one is simply not doable in VFP. I need fast data access, but I also need themes, office 2010-like UI, a good reporting system which allows me to drill down the data, a native way to connect to SQL Server (such as MySQL's Connector.NET, written in C# and provided with source code, not that lousy ODBC which truncates BigInt columns to 254 chars if you don't specify a switch, and also maps MySQL calculated fields - such as Concat(FirstName, LastName) to a general field in VFP and I can't stop it doing that because I have no access to source code) and so on. My point is the world is changing and I am going to change with it if I want to stay in this business for next 20 years. I am also not advocating .NET (although one could say that by reading my messages). I am advocating the change, if the current tool doesn't provide me the features I need. And regarding the data access, well, while it was true that first .NET version were damn slow, that is not true anymore. The guys at telerik have a datagrid which loads 1million cells in less than one second. (the demo is online at their site). Everything is written in pure C# and the source code is provided. Think only at the wealth of information one can get by looking in that code. "How they do it?" "here is how". > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:profoxtech- > [email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Leafe > Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2010 2:52 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: An interview I gave for MarketWatch > > On Jul 22, 2010, at 2:46 AM, Allen wrote: > > > I think it's about money and the sales of sql server. There was no > > good reason not to have vfp in the clr > > > Actually, I believe that there were. Some of the language > differences, such as dynamic typing and late binding, were not compatible > with the CLR. Fox would have been much better suited for the DLR (Dynamic > Language Runtime), which allows dynamic languages such as IronPython and > IronRuby to run in .Net. Problem was, however, that the DLR didn't exist > back then, and there were people in Microsoft who were convinced that a > DLR would never work. > > > -- Ed Leafe > > > > [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
