Comments on Craig Bailey on Microsoft: VFP: How to make Visual FoxPro cool

Good question.It'd be wrong for me to advise which...

2008-02-21T09:29:06.420+11:00

Good question.
It'd be wrong for me to advise which way to go - I don't have enough information about your needs etc.
But I would say this - it seems your question is really about functionality, and the issue of which technology you use is a lesser one.
So, as always you should use 'the right tool for the job'. This will include everything from meeting requirements, to ease of customisation, performance, offline-online connectivity, after-sales support, project timeframes, and of course price. Your decision will factor all of these items into the mix.
I'm a big FoxPro fan, but if the .NET system meets your needs better then you should go that way. The question you need to answer is which one best suits your needs better.
Thanks for reading.
Cheers,
Craig

Craig, here is a real kicker. I am currently looki...

2008-02-21T04:29:00.154+11:00

Craig, here is a real kicker. I am currently looking to purchase an ERP system for my medium sized company and am in the middle of making a decision. On the one hand, I can purchase a foxpro system that comes at a good price but needs tremendous customization to bring it up to speed with our industry. However, the supplier has offered a flat rate in exchange for having us as a reference account. On the other hand, I can get a .NET system that is more expensive but is made for our industry and therefore requires less customization. Should I purchase the dated foxpro and customize it for the next year (which will be re-written in .NET in a few years) or the new .NET system which will give me quicker results.

What kind of help are you after specifically?I rec...

2007-11-10T16:56:07.755+11:00

What kind of help are you after specifically?
I recommend checking out Universal Thread and the Fox Wiki for guidance - you'll get better results from than I could supply.
Regards,
Craig

hey I think fox much more effective, though I'm no...

2007-11-10T16:52:55.852+11:00

hey I think fox much more effective, though I'm not good with it yet. Can you teach me some tricks on how to make high level projects? my email, saviorfromthenorth@yahoo.com.ph

thanks

I'm a VFP diehard from SE Asia and I've been a use...

2006-10-07T13:19:03.983+10:00

I'm a VFP diehard from SE Asia and I've been a user since the days of FoxBase (I started young :D ). The dearth of employable developers who can or want to work with VFP is a real problem to me and my pig-headedness to stick with the Fox has me constantly wondering if I am just a good developer but a lousy businessman who won't let go of the past.

I found a solution to my dilemma (and stick to the Fox) by creating a web-based application that uses ASP/ASP.Net as it's frontend, SQL Server as it's backend, and - guess what? - VFP as the middle-tier that does the grunt work of batch processing.

My old developers gets to work on a platform they're productive with while the new recruits work on something they consider 'cool.'

Long live the Fox!

I like your post. I have been using VFP for a whil...

2006-08-26T01:59:46.570+10:00

I like your post. I have been using VFP for a while and I see a lot of potential in this tool.

We can't leave the Fox disappear!

Great PostI encourage every VFP developper to blog...

2006-06-15T17:21:18.936+10:00

Great Post

I encourage every VFP developper to blog, talk, make as much noise as possible about Visual FoxPro.

VFP is a great great development platform (rather than tool)

Th

To CraigSee my inline comments below….Your stateme...

2006-05-24T08:00:14.996+10:00

To Craig

See my inline comments below….

Your statement 'In my opinon, "coolness" has little or nothing to do with the matter' is I guess the main point I disagree with. Coolness (ie the perception of the product) has everything to do with it in my opinion.

JVP: I agree with you that perception is reality. The point I was making was that hard core VFP developers who believe the product is “cool” will need to be satisfied with that. i.e., the hearts and minds of those who have a different opinion will not change. Further, it is beyond the sphere of influence of those outside of Microsoft. Don’t forget, VFP has had a steadily declining role for about a decade. Is it a great tool? Absolutely! What I don’t do is confuse my personal subjective viewpoint with my objective opinions about VFP as evaluated against the backdrop of the I/T marketplace.

It is for this reason that I don't get involved in the .Net vs VFP technical debates (in that regard I just hedged my bets and built strong VFP and .Net teams at Talman).

JVP: Most debates like this are not productive because those on the weaker side (objectively speaking) tend to over-evaluate the strengths of their tool and those on the stronger side (again, objectively speaking) tend to under-estimate the weakness of their tool. The point being is that often, both sides tend to get emotional and subjective. Objectively speaking, VFP is not in .NET’s league. Whether you are talking technical ability or the marketplace – hands down, .NET beats VFP. Does this mean VFP is worthless? Of course not. However, if I was in a position where I had to mitigate risk and evaluate technologies, VFP would down – way down on the list. Would .NET necessarily win? No. Would VFP necessarily lose? No. Java could win – or something else. I, along with a few others, actually walked the walk when it came to preaching the “best tool for the job” mantra. That is why we often preached VB for work that involved heavy use of the Win32API. In a limited number of cases, VFP has a hands down advantage. That advantage however, has more to do with the skill set of the development staff. Can that advantage outweigh the long terms risks of sticking with VFP? Maybe – maybe not?...

So, here's my agenda... I think many products are technically weak, yet with the right 'spin' or marketing they can become very 'cool'. I won't give examples, or else the discussion will get bogged down debating them specifically - not my aim. While 'cool' may be subjective (as you state), I suggest that many uni students are being told what products are 'cool'. How much better then when the products (for example .Net or Java) are actually very technically strong. Making them cool is very easy. OK, so there is no dispute with why .Net or Java are cool. They deserve to be.

However, the crux of my argument is that VFP is also capable of being cool. Let's assume that you think VFP is technically weak (I personally think it is strong, but again that is not the issue as I see it). My argument is that even if it were weak, there are a few simple things that could be done to make it cool. And I then listed off a few in section 3. of the post.

JVP: I agree – spin is everything. If MS promoted VFP – it would succeed. I asked Bill Gates back in 1998 why VFP was not being marketed to win. The fact is – VFP makes enough money to keep afloat. However, it’s technical base is not one that is worth investing in. This is why the innovations have been sparse at best.

The main reduction in overall VFP programmer size is not due to existing (and possibly disgruntled :-) Fox developers leaving - although ofcourse that is a contributor - rather, it is because there are not many new developers entering. And I contend that the reason they are not entering is because they don't think VFP is cool, not because they have appraised the technical merits. I'd further contend that universities perhaps don't take technical merits into account too heavily when selecting which tools to teach (however I am on un-informed ground here - certainly in my software engineering degree the recommended tools were often inappropriate - but that may have changed these days - another blog post perhaps...)

JVP: I have said this many times – that the population of VFP developers is not being sustained with new developers coming into the fold. The question is why? The coolness thing is a symptom – not a root cause. I say that because I will then ask you why isn’t VFP cool? You may say – because MS does not market the product. I would then ask why doesn’t MS market VFP. You could then say because VFP is not cool – a circular argument. The answer Bill G. gave me was that it was a market that MS was not interested in investing in. Why? Because there was no upside. Look at where applications are today. They are distributed and browser based. The trend has been in reducing tco through reduced distribution costs. Hey – for Joe independent developer – he can make a good living writing and delivering apps in VFP. For MS - a multi-billion dollar world wide enterrprise – the economics tend to be bit different.

Later in your comment you indicate scepticism with IT professionals that claim expertise, but instead dish out bias - on this issue I agree strongly. I cringe when I hear some Fox devotees try to push for Fox solutions when a non-Fox one is clearly superior. I should point out that I also get slightly frustrated when .Net developers do like wise. This sin exists in both camps...

JVP: - See my comment above about how this tool vs. that tool arguments tend to not be productive.

Your parting paragraph correlating demand with technical merit is actually what I wish the issue were. Oh how I wish the number of developers was not tied to marketing, hype or simply a desire to work predominantly with new products. If only the perception issue didn't get in the way.

JVP: Except that if you put VFP through the technical wringer – it will come out on the short end of the stick. What it does – it does well. That said, if I were writing a web app today – I would do it in .NET – not in VFP using West Wind. I used West Wind and was a big fan of the tool. That however – was nearly 10 years ago…

I'd be interested in your thoughts on how specifically we could make VFP cool - what would it take (and I suspect you will focus on technical items) to make you label VFP cool in your mind? Is it the SQL items you mentioned, the event binding perhaps, or other areas? Myself personally I'd love to see multi-threading available natively in VFP.

JVP: First, if you take DBF’s and the local data stuff out of the picture – you have pretty much taken away the reason to use VFP. From my perspective, it has been nearly 10 years since I wrote anything that used DBF’s as a primary data store. My Law Practice notwithstanding, SQL Server and Oracle have been pretty much it. I still keep my fingers in the technology!! Over on profox – they are going ga ga over OOP menus in SednaX. BFG!! As Ed Leafe put it well – he was using them in CodeBook in 1995!! To be cool, something has to be relevant. To be relevant, it has to be innovated. The topics you see in magazines – some of which I wrote about in FoxTalk between 93 and 99 – are in their 5th, 6th, or 7th go-around. There is simply not much new to write about. And….for the stuff that is “new” – it is outside the scope of what VFP does well. In my opinion, if you are going to stray in the .NET world – then go there. Of course, the com/interop stuff is cool. That however, is all that you really need. I doubt that complex data types will be exposed in VFP. Again, what can be done is limited. Things like true events, etc. – keep in mind that VFP has had that stuff for a LONG time. If MS wanted – they could have put that in VFP too. If MS is destined to keep its thumb on the product – there is nothing anybody else can do about it.

The archives are full of those who have had grand ideas about marketing and promoting VFP. Here is the million dollar question (literally) – If you had $2 Million – and if MS would sell you VFP – would you buy it??????

John

Hi JVP,Firstly I want to thank you for taking the ...

2006-05-13T21:51:25.920+10:00

Hi JVP,
Firstly I want to thank you for taking the time to leave a comment on my blog - I value the opinions of everyone who thinks through an issue (and you definately do this).

Secondly I want state up front that I hold you in high regard. I thought your comments on Andrew's podcast were extremely relevant (and I said as much at the time: http://craigbailey.blogspot.com/2006/01/vfp-catching-up-on-my-fox-show-backlog.html).

Thirdly however I think it is important to clarify what I consider our difference in opinion is (and please let me know if I've misunderstood). It seems that you consider the reduction in VFP developers to be aligned with the technical merits (or lack of them) of VFP. I, on the other hand think the issue is to do with perception. And I agree it is a symptom - ie lack of developers is a symptom of VFP not being cool.

Your statement 'In my opinon, "coolness" has little or nothing to do with the matter' is I guess the main point I disagree with. Coolness (ie the perception of the product) has everything to do with it in my opinion.

It is for this reason that I don't get involved in the .Net vs VFP technical debates (in that regard I just hedged my bets and built strong VFP and .Net teams at Talman).

So, here's my agenda... I think many products are technically weak, yet with the right 'spin' or marketing they can become very 'cool'. I won't give examples, or else the discussion will get bogged down debating them specifically - not my aim. While 'cool' may be subjective (as you state), I suggest that many uni students are being told what products are 'cool'. How much better then when the products (for example .Net or Java) are actually very technically strong. Making them cool is very easy. OK, so there is no dispute with why .Net or Java are cool. They deserve to be.

However, the crux of my argument is that VFP is also capable of being cool. Let's assume that you think VFP is technically weak (I personally think it is strong, but again that is not the issue as I see it). My argument is that even if it were weak, there are a few simple things that could be done to make it cool. And I then listed off a few in section 3. of the post.

The main reduction in overall VFP programmer size is not due to existing (and possibly disgruntled :-) Fox developers leaving - although ofcourse that is a contributor - rather, it is because there are not many new developers entering. And I contend that the reason they are not entering is because they don't think VFP is cool, not because they have appraised the technical merits. I'd further contend that universities perhaps don't take technical merits into account too heavily when selecting which tools to teach (however I am on un-informed ground here - certainly in my software engineering degree the recommended tools were often inappropriate - but that may have changed these days - another blog post perhaps...)

Later in your comment you indicate scepticism with IT professionals that claim expertise, but instead dish out bias - on this issue I agree strongly. I cringe when I hear some Fox devotees try to push for Fox solutions when a non-Fox one is clearly superior. I should point out that I also get slightly frustrated when .Net developers do like wise. This sin exists in both camps...

Your parting paragraph correlating demand with technical merit is actually what I wish the issue were. Oh how I wish the number of developers was not tied to marketing, hype or simply a desire to work predominantly with new products. If only the perception issue didn't get in the way.

I'd be interested in your thoughts on how specifically we could make VFP cool - what would it take (and I suspect you will focus on technical items) to make you label VFP cool in your mind? Is it the SQL items you mentioned, the event binding perhaps, or other areas? Myself personally I'd love to see multi-threading available natively in VFP.

Finally, I apologise if I've misunderstood some of your points. If so, please point me on the right path.

Warm regards,
Craig

To Andy MacNeill:Re: your statement - It is very l...

2006-05-13T04:21:28.053+10:00

To Andy MacNeill:

Re: your statement - It is very limited thinking to suggest that the only reason that Visual Studio has succeeded is because it is a superior architecture. It succeeds because Microsoft can immediately place a product by throwing money at it. Look at Borland. Most developers believed that it was the superior development tools maker and more - but their products failed. Lotus Improv was far and beyond Excel 3.0 - yet it failed. Why?

------------------

i.e. - VS succeeds because of marketing. That is a given. Still, the architecture and technical aspects of the product have to be in place first.

It is a little hypocritical to scoff at VS for marketing reasons. After all, if VFP was marketed in such a manner that made claims beyond what it really could do - I doubt you would complain.

To Andy MacNeillRe: your statement: What's so funn...

2006-05-13T04:17:10.290+10:00

To Andy MacNeill

Re: your statement: What's so funny is that the chief complaint "VFP doesn't support events" simply isn't true because VFP DOES support Windows event binding now.

Andy - as I stated, although VFP can consume windows events in COM Components, VFP cannot define, raise or consume its own custom events. In pre-.NET versions of VB and in VB - we can define custom events and handlers. So with that said, it is your statement that is not true.

Like so many things - whether it is Intellisense, etc. - while VFP comes close to the capabilities of VB and .NET - it misses the mark. This is due mostly to the fact that much of VFP's newer features are more than anything else - xBase add-ons. i.e., the core of the product has not changed much.

With respect to my assertion that in all material respects, the product has remained unchanged since VFP 6 - I'll stand by that. Sure - there are a number of new features - but they have not proven themselves to provide much utility. The .NET inter-operability stuff??? I would contend that once you start straying into the .NET world - that is where you should be. Sure, there are a number of add-ons to the sql language in VFP. However, it is should be noted that these sql add-ons have always been available in sql server. Again, its good that VFP has the features - but in the end - it is a bit late to the dance.

Andy - you go on to say that what VFP needs is a few apps that "rock the world". Wasn't that what JFAST was all about? Wasn't that what the VFP Excellence Awards were all about? In my interview on your pod cast - I told you then that it is difficult to make the business case for VFP. Again - you say what VFP needs is killer apps. Nowhere however, do you address the threshold issues of business justification. For example, the state of the art rests with distirbuted - web based apps that behave like classic Win32 apps. These apps have the advantages and richness of Win32 apps - without the distribution and installation woes. How would you do that in VFP efficiently and economically?

Guys like Steve Black, Bill Sanders - and the usual cast of characters talk a good game re: the business justification for Fox - but in reality - none of those arguments carry the day.

By the way, Milind has already said "We will not b...

2006-05-13T03:21:09.983+10:00

By the way, Milind has already said "We will not be rebranding VFP" in Sedna.

Good jumping in Rob.Hey Craig - yeah ,it's JVP.Wha...

2006-05-13T03:15:57.896+10:00

Good jumping in Rob.

Hey Craig - yeah ,it's JVP.

What's so funny is that the chief complaint "VFP doesn't support events" simply isn't true because VFP DOES support Windows event binding now.

it's kind of like saying "Windows doesn't support a higher resolution than 8 bit colors" - something which may have been true in Windows 3.1 but hasn't been true for quite some time.

VFP's points about "coolness" are well put - it is a VERY subjective term. He has chosen VS as his "cool tool" but I "might" argue that Visual Studio is getting to the point where it isn't considered "cool" and that developers are looking elsewhere for better tools. Because he has moved on, he wants to justify it accordingly.

As Craig(squared - B and B) and I have always said (paraphrasing of course), what VFP needs is a few sample applications that "rock" the world. Look at Ruby on Rails - it gets no respect whatsoever from "Visual studio developers" , who "rail" against its scalability - yet, it has the "coolness" going for it on the strengths of a few web apps that totally rock.

It is very limited thinking to suggest that the only reason that Visual Studio has succeeded is because it is a superior architecture. It succeeds because Microsoft can immediately place a product by throwing money at it. Look at Borland. Most developers believed that it was the superior development tools maker and more - but their products failed. Lotus Improv was far and beyond Excel 3.0 - yet it failed. Why?

Build a great product. Capture mindshare and then you've got a winner.

And I'm so glad Colin called it: VFP is Managed code - it's just not DotNet code!. But as Craig originally linked to, VFP suffers from the fact that all of the error messages in VFP say "FoxPro error" instead of just "error" like other languages- as a result, the users familiarity with "FoxPro errors" in applications is heightened.

Imagine the reaction if every time a Microsoft app crashed - the error message said "A Microsoft Error has occurred."

There's been no real functionality since V6.0? I r...

2006-05-12T18:13:03.420+10:00

There's been no real functionality since V6.0? I really disagree. There's been no fundamental shift in the product perhaps but that's not the same. Certainly many of the improvements that we have made to our products in that period were not possible until the newer versions of VFP (particularly V8). There certainly are plenty of features that we don't use but I think that the list of "useful" features would vary from developer to developer and possibly project to project.

I agree that new technology is always worth looking into and .NET has some very cool features. I'm a little skeptical though of IT professionals who identify new technology as only being available in new products. Our product has plenty of new technology being built into it but it has been around for 15 years. If we can do it, I would think Microsoft might be able to manage it as well ;)

Certainly there are things that VFP is not good at. There are just as many things that .NET is not good at. Our job as developers includes picking the right solution for a particular problem from the hundreds of ways of solving it. This doesn't have to be a Blu-ray vs HD DVD battle - there's no reason that only one technology will survive. There usually is no single "correct" solution.

I've not always been a VFP developer (or in fact a Windows based developer) but it wasn't that hard to learn. If you're short of VFP developers, employ a developer who fits your organisation for other reasons and teach them VFP! There's a shortage because there's demand, not because there's a lack of demand. It's not because VB6 is such a good product that VB programmers are a dime a dozen ;)

5 years from now, the technology will be vastly different... and still very much the same. A good programmer will still be a good programmer!

Re your statement that "The biggest problem VFP fa...

2006-05-12T04:51:40.306+10:00

Re your statement that "The biggest problem VFP faces going forward is lack of developers"

This is merely a symptom. The reason why there has been a net decrease in VFP developers for the past decade is the fact that VFP has not been innovated to any siginficiant degree since 1998 when VFP 6 was released with the capability of creating COM components.

Indeed, VFP can easily connect to SQL Server. It can easily connect to Oracle and MySQL for that matter. There is however, more ot the story than simply connecting to a backend. For a long time, we asked for Sql Server tools that VB had. In 1997, during the 6 beta, I asked about the ability to raise and respond to events - both standard and custom. Based on a prototype I wrote for Randy Brown in 1998 - the VFPCOM library came about - but it was a kludge and it was limited.

In my opinon, "coolness" has little or nothing to do with the matter. My collegue Rod Paddock and I took roughly 80% of the concepts we employed in VFP and employed those concepts in .NET. With every new version, it ends up that only about 10-20% of the new features have signficant utility. As the old saying goes, just becuase it is there, it does not follow that you should use it.

If you can make a good living delivering solutions with VFP - and you recognize and accept (assume) that a risk of limited opporunity exists - then by all means - continue to develop in VFP. If however, you are not willing to assume the risk - then you are compelled to update your skill set. I for one am skeptical of people who hold themselves out to be I/T professionals on one hand - but on the other hand, either entirely dismiss new technology or at the very least, discount it because it is not like "Fox".

The bottom line, if you think VFP is cool - then it is cool. It is a subjective value assesment.

For sure, if it were a technically compelling alternative - objectively speaking - you would not have a shortage of developers since the requisite demand for the technology would exist...right????

I'm just back from a weekend away, and am thus lat...

2006-05-08T23:29:31.136+10:00

I'm just back from a weekend away, and am thus late in reading the great comments people have posted.

To Carlos, thanks for the link to the status bar - initial thoughts are very good, I will be blogging about it more in the coming weeks.

Hey Paul, your comments are worthy of a blog post in their own right. I will be responding separately.
For readers who might have missed the connection, the comment is from the same Paul Stovell I met with and based much of the blog post on. From his comment here you can see what great ideas he has.

To Ylber, I thank you for your thoughts. Yes, I agree, the integration (eg with web services) has been there for a few versions already. It is great that Sedna is going to extend this concept even further.

To Malcolm, I totally agree. How can we push Microsoft to spend some of its budget on branding rather than interop?

Finally to Scotty, what do you suggest? How can we 'leverage' the Fox name (and thus create a synergy going forward of homogenous core competancies... {g})?

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts. Thanks also to Luis Maria at PortalFox who was kind enough to translate this post for the Hispanic community: http://www.portalfox.com/article.php?sid=2131

Craig

Just a thought, but maybe its worth "leveraging" t...

2006-05-08T08:20:11.640+10:00

Just a thought, but maybe its worth "leveraging" the FireFox bandwagon. After all, who was first, FoxPro or FireFox...

FireFoxPro!!

Craig!Great post! I agree with your conclusions - ...

2006-05-07T04:03:41.523+10:00

Craig!

Great post! I agree with your conclusions - a repackaged version of VFP with some cosmetic changes and a new name would be one of the best features of Sedna!

Malcolm

Excellent post, I in individual they are developer...

2006-05-05T11:55:35.090+10:00

Excellent post,

I in individual they are developer in VFP and in C # and I consider a productive developer highly and I always test first in VFP and soon it development in NET

Sedna bets strongly to an integration but reliable, position from VFP 7,0 can with something of work to integrate Web Services of VFP to NET and vice versa but sedna is effective integration!

Warm Greetings
Ylber Aponte
Portalfox Venezuela

Great post Craig. You're absolutely right, it's al...

2006-05-05T10:06:56.243+10:00

Great post Craig. You're absolutely right, it's all about perception.

I guess the next question is what do we do about it? A lot of the problems VFP faces would be a lot easier to solve with the help of Microsoft. What incentives do Microsoft have to support FoxPro?

Let's think for a minute about how Microsoft work.

First, it's my belief that Microsoft don't make any money from selling developer tools. Infact, they're running at a big fat loss. Looking at their balance sheets, you can see they bundle FoxPro and the .NET initiative along with "Server Tools" (this category also includes SQL Server and Windows Server), which is hardly breaking even. In contrast, their real income comes from Office and Windows sales.

Microsoft make money because they make great developer tools and practically give them away (think about how much they could REALLY charge for Visual Studio if it was all about profit). This means all of us developers love developing for Windows, which means all software is built for windows. Since all software runs on Windows, end users have no choice but to buy Windows and Office. That's the virtuous cycle that Billy G talks about.

So we leverage that. You need to convince Microsoft that *they* can convince developers that FoxPro is cool. If they do, more software will be written for Windows and faster, which means more sales of Windows and Office for them.

So rather than spreading the word to developers that they should use FoxPro, I'd concentrate on convincing Microsoft. Convince them the work they need to do to lift the profile of FoxPro is small and it's worthwhile.

Excellent post."...and the status bar is from the ...

2006-05-04T05:30:06.603+10:00

Excellent post.

"...and the status bar is from the 90s..."

Well, I did my very small part on this subject, check http://www.goyanet.com.ar/vfp/ctl32_statusbar/
and get "real" Windows statusbar

Hi Anonymous and Colin,Yes, you are absolutely cor...

2006-05-03T09:12:59.736+10:00

Hi Anonymous and Colin,
Yes, you are absolutely correct, and I should have clarified that part in the post.
However at CodeCamp and the like, whenever developers use the term 'managed code' the understanding is that it is 'obviously' {g} referring to .Net code...

I was going to say exactly what Anonymous just sai...

2006-05-03T07:51:58.373+10:00

I was going to say exactly what Anonymous just said: VFP code is Managed Code. It just isn't .NET code. Everything that can be said as reasons why "managed code" is good, can be said of Foxpro, and has been since day 1. A while back I tried to get MSFT to start calling the runtime the "FoxPro Virtual Machine" so that it would be placed in the proper perspective ("the java/.Net runtime is *how big*?" ) but in hindsight the term "virtual machine" seems to have lost its lustre so perhaps that was a good call after all.

Just a correction to one thing you said here...VFP...

2006-05-03T04:41:25.873+10:00

Just a correction to one thing you said here...

VFP code IS MANAGED. VFP has been doing managed code since it was released. VFP has its own garbage collector too.

The main difference is that the code doesn't run in the .Net CLR but the VFP runtime which are essentially the same. Of course the .Net CLR does have many more features it is basically the same.

One of the best VFP related blog posts I have seen...

2006-05-03T04:15:18.003+10:00

One of the best VFP related blog posts I have seen in some time. It is well laid out and sound arguments throughout. Great job Craig!