On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 1:12 PM Kurt @ Gmail kurthwendt@gmail.com wrote:

Hey Ted - thanks for letting us know about this. Its pretty cool. I really like that pic of the fox in a wizard type outfit.

The original book, published by Addison-Wesley, was the second in the series of "Hacker's Guide" following Hacker's Guide for Word for Windows by Woody Leonard, which included a wizard on the cover ( https://images.app.goo.gl/HSsTP63kVRmVHZD8A) . Robert Griffith ( https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2503903/) did the design for the FoxPro book, keeping in style with the original, but adding the Fox. It inspired Halloween costumes (http://www.rickschummer.com/images/glgdw/glgdw2001d.jpg)). Many wizards were involved, including contributed chapters from Steven Black and technical editing by the late Drew Speedie.

Am curious to

know Doug's thought process in regards to posting this specific chapter. I mean, yeah, I get it - its listing all the commands and how they work.

Doug would have to answer, I suspect. But the reference guide, which is Section 4, is composed of hundreds of documents, and are the pages I refer to every time I need to review the order of parameters or the trick to using a particular function, or some gotcha I vaguely recall. The other Sections, fore and aft, are longer-form essays explaining why things are they way they are, or how we viewed FoxPro as a whole, the sum of parts (LLFFs, DDE, OLE, ODBC, Fox's SQL, the IDE, the Power Tools, the data engine) and how the whole is greater. So, the other sections are good for reading once, and reviewing occasionally, but Section 4 is the daily go-to.

I also really like the quote - the 1st 1 from Alice & Wonderland, and,

then I saw the one from a band, as I was looking at COS(). And, that brought back distant memories.

Finding quotes to complement the text was a fun exercise.

Back in the early 80's - if people had an Apple or a PC computer in their homes (and it was very few) - I could in about 10 minutes write a small program that would spin a line around and essentially draw a circle. I used the Cartesian to Polar coord. systems conversion - using Sine & Cosine functions - to spin angles & gen X&Y coord's - and, people were always blown away when I would do that on there computer. Yeah - literally about 10 min. to create the program and have it running. It was cool, since it was early CG, and showed not only the power of a personal computer - but the power of math and a couple of simple math functions!

https://www.xkcd.com/435/

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On Mon, Dec 30, 2019 at 2:50 PM Malcolm Greene profox@bdurham.com wrote:

My physical copy was so dog-eared, covered with stains, and filled with post-it notes and random bookmarks (printouts, pens, pencils, receipts, paperclips and god else knows what) that my wife begged me to burn it. Given its size (plus all the crap I jammed into it) I could have probably heated my house for week if I did.

I've used one of the HackFox7 mega-tomes as a monitor stand for years.

Let's say, we misjudged the size a bit :)

I've been told some shops drilled holes and took the binding off with a bandsaw, converting it into a loose-leaf for easier management :)

For myself, I made a CHM file, as it was a fun learning experience and a lightweight way to have the book available at client sites, which was my MO for much of the 90's and 00's. And now, it's making its way to GitHub and MarkDown, a great place to be shared from.

***I'm eagerly waiting the Python edition.***

Not from me, I'm afraid. While I dabble in Python, making lights blink with one of the Raspberry Pi's, I've never gotten beyond duffer stage.

Indeed same here. Lost appetite . Never used the books. CHM all the Times

Op ma 30 dec. 2019 22:15 schreef MB Software Solutions, LLC < mbsoftwaresolutions@mbsoftwaresolutions.com>:

On 12/30/2019 4:01 PM, Ted Roche wrote:

...

Not from me, I'm afraid. While I dabble in Python, making lights blink with one of the Raspberry Pi's, I've never gotten beyond duffer stage.

Admittedly, I think one of the negatives of getting older is that my attitude towards learning all kinds of new stuff is becoming tired and less enthused. My current Corporate gig is that of a Business Analyst and I'm good with that. Our Java developers here are all younger than me. They're learning Angular now for a new project we're undertaking. I just don't seem to have that same energetic "zeal" that I used to have years ago for learning new stuff. I would suspect I'm not the only one in this group feeling that way as the years go on.

[excessive quoting removed by server]

My grandson has started learning Python at school so I've decide that if I am to keep my status as family IT guru I need to come out of my retired comfort zone and learn it too 😊

Is there an equivalent to ProFox for Python? It'll never be as good but might help me 😊

John

John Weller 01380 723235 07976 393631

Admittedly, I think one of the negatives of getting older is that my attitude towards learning all kinds of new stuff is becoming tired and less enthused. My current Corporate gig is that of a Business Analyst and I'm good with that. Our Java developers here are all younger than me. They're learning Angular now for a new project we're undertaking. I just don't seem to have that same energetic "zeal" that I used to have years ago for learning new stuff. I would suspect I'm not the only one in this group feeling that way as the years go on.

Thanks Alan, hopefully now subscribed 😊

John Weller 01380 723235 07976 393631

-----Original Message----- From: ProfoxTech profoxtech-bounces@leafe.com On Behalf Of Alan Bourke Sent: 03 January 2020 11:39 To: profoxtech@leafe.com Subject: Re: Hacker's Guide, Section 4, now live on github.io!

Well, yeah, there's ProPython ... :)

https://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/propython

-- Alan Bourke alanpbourke (at) fastmail (dot) fm

On Jan 3, 2020, at 06:46, Malcolm Greene profox@bdurham.com wrote:

Not much traffic on ProPython. Google for the Python Tutor email list and the Python (.org) email list and join those. Stackoverflow also carries a lot of Python traffic.

Yes, ProPython was started because of a high number of email from ProFox people interested in Python. Since then, though, those who stuck with Python have found countless other resources, and traffic on ProPython has dried up. Same with the ProLinux list.

For Python, I’d suggest the main python.org list: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

-- Ed Leafe