Mike,
Just sitting here on a hot July Friday and pondering development platforms and languages.
In the past a lot of discussion has focused on Python, and there's always Ruby, etc., and I'm impressed with XOJO...what I've seen so far. Of course Microsoft is still a player, but other than Visual Foxpro, what is the current "most likely to succeed" development platform/language in this group's opinion?
Just throwing it out there...curious what the pulse is and where things seem to be going in mid-2016. Have a great weekend!
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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