Interesting discussion thanks for your input.
In my opinion, we have stagnated because the evolution of the community requires a roadmap that provides something that the old path could not do. Tech has moved on. I appreciate Chen's work but in my mind the future of coding is in a combination of Object Relational Mapping, the Internet Of Things, Crypto and the Semantic web. The glue that holds it together should be a VFP-esque language because that makes the rules literate for humans.
Visual programming is great, I love Blockly for simple rules. I would hate to try and code a warehouse management system in it.
It is like Behaviour Driven Development. I want to be able to tell the computer the business rules without being shoe-horned into a computer language which is optimized for execution. It should be a language for the exchange of concepts between humans and computers. That is where BASIC, but more specifically dBase, really revolutionized coding.
For me, I see an opportunity for dBase rules to transpile into JS. It obviously requires a substantial database layer but by using established ORMs (like knex.js) it means you don't have to do the mechanics of the data storage. It is a parsing problem.
Anyway just musing.
On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 11:08 PM, Thierry Nivelet tnivelet@foxincloud.com wrote:
Le 09/10/2017 à 12:57, Paul Hemans a écrit :
The VFP community which is now quite small
Rather than small, I would say that the number of leaders is small, mainly because -- in my eyes -- the 'elite' of the community is reluctant to renew itself, and accept new members, new ideas, new ways to move forward.
eg., Chen of Baiyujia has done an **incredible job** with VFP C++ compiler and VFP advanced -- he has done things that no one would ever have thought possible, just because he was *convinced* it was possible. Chen has posted articles about his work for at least 7 years (mainly on Foxite).
The 2017 'Hard to kill' book by Whil Hentzen does not even mention VFP C++ compiler and VFP advanced!!
The whole book should have been dedicated to this invention, to the incredible opportunities it brings, how we could interest young guys on a language that we compile ourserves, and tweak in almost all directions as we want regardless of what large corporations tell us to do. There should be tens of developers offering Chen to help somehow and enjoying this revival.
Instead of betting on its strength, this community has accepted its death sentence as inevitable and is somehow waiting in the death row, just telling stories about the good old times when we could run a full accounting package with 1k RAM. on a Commodore bought at Radio Shack.
Still time to lift the head up.
Thierry Nivelet FoxInCloud Give your VFP app a second life in the cloud http://foxincloud.com/
[excessive quoting removed by server]