Bill Arnold wrote:
I can't answer your question satisfactorily, but I think about it a lot with close to a half million VFP LOC to manage. Some related comments:
I don't think the language/dev system we're looking for exists yet, but I hold out hope that one will emerge in the time we have left. There are other xBase centric languages out there (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:XBase_programming_language_family for one list, but I see it doesn't show Alaska software). Obviously, the trick is for one or more of these vendors to match (most of) VFP and provide a language converter from VFP to their product. Can they? I think so. Look at all the progress one person, Christof, has made on his own! The world has vast numbers (and growing) of programmers looking for worthwhile apps to develop, and this is certainly one such.
As to the 'time we have left', it's totally up to MS. They can kill VFP outright or by a death of a thousand cuts if they want to, but my gut feeling is they wouldn't and VFP9 apps will continue to run under Windows for years to come (best case "for the life of Windows"). Indeed, it's even possible that our VFP licenses may prove to be quite valuable at some point.
In a worst case scenario we can always turn to VM and run VFP9 under an older version of Windows
Bottom line, for me, is that I'm continuing to develop with VFP (with all the enthusiasm as ever) and hoping such a bridge appears before it's time runs out.
Bill
Great to hear from you, Bill!
I came to the same "full speed ahead, damn the absence of corporate acknowledgement VFP exists!" conclusion soon after VFP's demise was announced. As long as it keeps working...it's the most productive platform for me by a wide margin.
I recently discovered vDOS (vdos.info) and can't get over the joy of firing up a Foxpro DOS application on my Windows 10 Pro 64-bit desktop! vDOS is fast, easy to use, and it works! If anyone is curious, vDOS is based on (fork of) DOSBox. But, according to the vDOS author, DOSBox + Foxpro DOS = data corruption due to the DOSBox authors including some network data buffering (delayed writes.) I have a client using 6 WIN10 Pro workstations with vDOS + my Foxpro DOS application simultaneously, and no data corruption issues so far. The users like not having to start the virtual computer, then start the app.
So far I'm really happy with VFP9 on Win10. I noticed last night that Win10 workstations no longer leave file handles open when my applications shut down. When the workstations were running Win7 Pro, probably half of the 50 workstations that connected to my Linux data server would report DLL files remaining open and active after all the VFP9 applications on the workstation were closed. Plus, the overall network management (listing of files in Windows Explorer, mapping drives, disconnecting drives) is snappier and more reliable.
You mentioned VM's on Win10 to run VFP9...I found that Oracle's VirtualBox is much slower at writing text to files, although overall the speed is fine. The best performer, for pure speed of all overall operations, is VMWare Workstation 12 Player. But, to use in a business environment it's $150 per workstation. vDOS seems to be even slower than VirtualBox for high volume text-to-file IO, but it is very acceptable otherwise.
Mike