I know I’ve been away a lot lately. . .

First, let me say I definitely miss blogging more than I ever thought possible. I've really enjoyed the process of writing, posting and getting to know all of you who've actually made me wish we all lived close to one another.

Second, I’ve just been so busy, between the job, the house, the yard and all of my other ‘projects’ I just haven’t had much time to sit and write.

Not an excuse really, as I know many of you are at least as busy as I am, if not more so. It is however about the only reason I have for being away so long!

I’m hoping to post pictures of the work I’ve done this year on the ‘Natural Area’ of the yard. Some of you may recall that I got started on it last year, but never really wrapped it up. This year I touched up the areas I started last year, and I’ve about doubled the area that I can actually ‘walk around’ in now.

You’ll see in the pictures (when I post them) that I still have a lot of brush to clear along the drainage area, and in the back corner of the lot… that said, I still think I’ve got about 75% of the deal under control now, compared to about 25% last year!

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Regarding FoxPro…

I've been fairly quiet on the announcement by Microsoft that they've ceased new development on Visual FoxPro. I, in my heart, knew this day would come the day they announced they'd bought the company from Dave Fulton. I even wrote Bill Gates, and spoke extensively with the folks at Mirosoft back then and was assured they had no such plans.

It seems they may not have had immediate plans... but at this point it feels like all the 'words' did nothing but delay the inevitable.

Most of you know I’ve been a proponent, hell, even a zealot, when it came to singing FoxPro’s praises. I’ve spent the better part of the past 25 years earning a decent living with the Fox (or VFP as many like to call it) as my primary development tool. Many years the number of lines of code I wrote in anything other than FoxPro were so small as to not even be worth counting.

That era is over though… Microsoft is abandoning the product, and once that happens it may as well as be already dead and gone. No new development is popping up on the horizon (well not *my* horizon anyway), and there are fewer and fewer contracts for even maintenance work. It is, after all work, and the work I've done to earn a living for over two decades.

It’s a very strange position to be in.

I feel like I’m assisting in the death of an old friend… Helping an otherwise healthy friend commit suicide… very strange indeed.

Many of you may find it odd that I’d call FoxPro an “old friend”… make comparisons to a living, breathing entity…. Others will simply understand the feeling. Let me try to explain it.

A computer language, is much like any other type of “tool”.

A bit cumbersome when you first pick it up, but, over time, each and every time you use it, you get a little better at using it.

Eventually, you get so good with it, it’s no longer separate from you, but a part of you. You’re better as a result of having the tool, it ‘extends’ you. The tool enables you to do things that before it existed, were either impossible, or so costly as to be considered impossible.

So here I am, a mid-50’s guy who’s achieved a bit of success, and some notoriety (from time to time) as a VFP/FoxPro developer. Yet, I find myself looking forward with a bit of uncertainty as to my marketability, now that my ‘claim to fame’ is soon to be a "here lies" headstone the landscape of development languages.

Yes, it’s true I have decent DotNet chops, and have even completed a couple fairly complex projects with it as the primary tool. I don’t however seeing me becoming the kind of “DotNet guru” that I was with VFP.

Why? A couple of reasons actually.

First, and probably foremost, is the fact that while a decent development environment, DotNet is no VFP. The raw power to manipulate data is simply absent. Not a day goes by that when I show a DotNet, or even a Java developer what I can do with ‘data’ in less time than it takes them to set up to begin coding, that they’re not impressed.

Second, I really don’t have the desire I once had to work day and night (on the job and off) again to get *that* good at any language I’m currently aware of. Trust me on this, there’s no shortcut to become truly proficient with a language, it takes years of 10, 12 even 16 hour days before you truly master a computer language. I’m just not that interested any more… I’d much rather lie in the shade with a pitcher of Gin, Tonic and Lime when I'm not working!!

What I am interested in however is working on mastering the use of the written word…. It’s time to hang up my ‘developer’ hat, and begin a new journey I think…

One where I work at putting words together, to achieve a specific effect… but this time the language will be English, and the effects will be more human emotion, and less mathematics, in nature.

I’ve been thinking lately, that there have been a lot of experiences (in developing systems) over the past 25 years, some funny, some sad, that I’ve never written about… I'm thinking a lot lately of doing so soon.

I haven’t mentioned it before, but a recent position change on the job has me more in the ‘Business’ side of things, and less and less on the “IT/IS” side of things. On a day to day basis, I’m much more involved with the business *need* and far less involved with the IT/IS *how*…. I'm concerned more with analytics, metric and application flow now, than with how that flow is accomplished.

I’d forgotten what a challenge working from the business side can be, and how much fun! We were working on the 2008 Project specifications last week, it’s a strictly business need driven process, and I’ve had more fun reviewing and contributing to that, than I’ve had in quite some time!

So, I'm hoping I'll actually start writing again and you'll start stopping in again to let me know how I'm doing!!

I hope you're all doing well... drop me a note and say hi!


Technorati Tags: Visual FoxPro - Comfort - Decisions - Software Development
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What Have I Been Up To? . . .

Since the last post?

Well, primarily I’ve been working for the Railroads, my workload there has been, well, let’s just say, overwhelming, this month. There were several tight deadlines, and some areas of responsibility that were fairly new to me as well.

Those combined with my “Not a problem, I can handle it” attitude got me in some trouble around mid-month… I know, me, Mr. “I deliver on time”… finally got himself in trouble and missed a deadline… that may not be a big deal to some of you, but, it was a big deal to me.

I’m happy to say the team I work with, really, and I mean really, stepped up to the plate to help me bring this one phase in, and get the project back in the green. For someone (me) who has had little success in getting help from others (with a few notable exceptions) this was a wonderful turn of events.

In another phase, I’ve completed a data model and an application in VB.Net to allow folks to analyze what they’ve been working on. It’s comprised of one basic form, with a tab control, thirteen tabs each with various views of aspects of the data model. There’s even a context sensitive column search feature that’s activated on a right mouse-click.

How did I get that done, with everything else on my plate? One word, “Infragistics”.

These folks have a slogan “Powering the presentation layer”… from where I sit, they definitely do! If you’re involved with .Net, and are looking for a controls toolbox that functions in Windows, or Web, applications check this company out, for my money they’re definitely the real deal.

In my spare time, I’ve been working on, believe it or not, preparing a commercial VFP application for delivery. A very well known paint company contracted with me to help them with this project earlier this year, but, things didn’t really start heating up until mid-February, and then got very serious, when, in the middle of my other crisis.

Just this past week I worked over 50 hours for the RR’s and another 30 on the project for the paint company… my entire month of March has been a series of 70-80 hour work weeks. I’m not complaining mind you, just recognizing that old saying “When it rains, it pours!”

In talking with some of the other team member on the paint project, I’m pretty confident we have a shippable product now. We’ve converted the application to VFP9, added a software licensing process, altered how some internal password functionality is derived and in general done a decent ‘cleanup’ on the product.

Again, great team, excellent communications and hard work by everyone got this pulled together in time.

My friend Ken Sheldon (remember Ken?) and I had been planning to get together this weekend and hit a bowling alley, roll a few games and, in general just catch up with one another. On Wednesday, as I was looking at some additional tight deadlines (changes to the RR application for a Friday demo, and the fast approaching shipping deadline for the paint company, I was seriously considering postponing our plans.

At some point however, I realized that I always do that, let the work interfere with my personal life. I’ve been doing it for 25 years, Ken would have understood, he knows me and my dedication… about that same time I decided that four or five hours out of the weekend, to enjoy some time with an old friend (Ken and I have know each other 20 years, this year, and we’ve worked together at 3 different times over those years), was something I definitely needed to do.

So at about 8:00am on Saturday he and I headed out to Buffaloe Lanes in Cary. (Yes, that’s how they spell it… as Ken would say, from the Dan Quayle school of spelling).

When we got there, a youth league was in full swing, all 32 lanes in use by kids in the age range of 5-10 it appeared. Well we stood around and talked, and watched the kids bowl for an hour or so, and decided we’d reserve a pair of lanes for when the first pair freed up. As we were talking to the folks, one of them said “No one showed up on 27/28, let them have the pair”

So we were off and rolling (literally).

I’m happy to report that Ken has finally beaten me in bowling; in fact he gave me a sound ‘thrashing’… I averaged about 146, he averaged 198… The only other time he and I bowled together it was in Liverpool, NY.. I had probably the best three game series in my life, he had one of his worst… and I’ve hung on to that victory for over a decade… I’m just so glad that we got out again, and he won, it gives an excuse for a rematch!! Hey, he’s a great bowler, I’m just glad he’s not embarrassed to be seen rolling with me!

So what do ya think folks.. a strange month for sure… I’m neck deep in both VFP and .Net, Microsoft announces the end of VFP yet I’m working like a mad man to keep up…

Two lessons here for me…

1st, you should always make time for friends and family.. It’s worth every second of the time

2nd, hard work, and great team members can accomplish amazing results, especially when you let the team know you need their help.

So how has your March been?

Technorati Tags: Visual FoxPro - .Net - Decisions - Software Development
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Open Source… the future?

The open source community, that’s where Microsoft says they intend to place VFP once they’re done with it.

I see few distinct possibilities for the future if that’s what they actually do.

First, and the worst case, is that it will simply die there.

If you know the history, Microsoft bought FoxPro originally to get the ‘Rushmore’ technology it contained. You see, at the core of the Fox was a database engine, one capable of incredible speed, even on those old 286/386 and 486 boxes with slow hard drives.

In many cases it out performed databases on much larger platforms, costing ten times, or more money.

Surrounding that core was (is) a language designed from the ground up to manipulate and work with data. It has some of the best string manipulation functions of any language I’ve ever used.

So, what I fear is that if they release it to the open source community, it’ll be stripped of the technology that made it such a work horse, and saddled with a shell of what it has today.

If those things happen, it will surely die a fairly quick death out there in the open source world.

The other, less likely, but far more exciting prospect is that it’ll land in Open source intact. A group of developers, possibly some of the folks from the current VFP group at Microsoft will pick it up and run with it.

There’s a ton of us ‘old coders’ out here, and a great bunch of young guns as well that would love to be able to tell our clients we’re building their new application on the newest piece of open source software.

The open source community is, overall, robust. It’s also made up of folks just like most of us VFP geeks, zealots, they grab onto something an run with it, and before you know it, it’s the “language de jour” … hey look at Ruby, it was virtually unheard of a couple of years ago…. It’s all the ‘buzz’ today.

Another, possibly even more interesting possibility, is that a group will form up, and using the base code, build a .Net version of VFP. A VFP.Net.

Personally I think that is the track that holds the most promise of widespread success, in my opinion. Microsoft has invested untold millions in the .Net platform, and it’s actually beginning to find some widespread acceptance in the corporate market place. It’s still behind Java, but it’s gaining.

Currently, while you can ‘connect’ to a wide variety of Databases from .Net,
manipulating that data, slicing it, and analyzing it, in .Net, is a long way from the ease with which it can be done in VFP today.

The concept of ‘Macro substitution’ inherent in VFP, simply doesn’t exist in .Net (or at least no one *I have talked to has found it), it would add a ton of functionality if it were there.

We can currently combine code from any .Net language, in the same solution as it all eventually is compiled to be utilized by the .Net CLR (Common Language Runtime), so why not a VFP.Net?

Hell there’s even a COBOL.Net, surely there are minds out there smarter than mine who could get it done!

I’ve built some DLL’s in VFP that I can add to a .Net application to provide some of the functionality I’ve needed from time to time… can a VFP.Net be that far away?

Regardless though, I’ll be devoting most of my free time now to converting my favorite VFP apps, like my TimeClock© to .Net. I can’t afford to be out of work with a skill set no one is willing to pay for!

If you’ve got thoughts, I’d love to hear them!



Technorati Tags: Visual FoxPro - Microsoft - VFP - Software Development
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The End Of An Era. . . .

Well folks, it’s official… Microsoft is ending development on any new releases of Visual FoxPro.

Redmond Developer News Microsoft: No Visual FoxPro 10

I’ve been an xBase/VFP developer for over two decades, 20 plus years, and now, well, it seems those skills will pretty much be about as useful as those of an ‘old school’ TV repairman.

Yeah, there will still be a ‘need’, but nothing like there was. Makes me glad I’ve worked on my .Net chops over the past few years… time to get really working on them now though!

Sorry I haven’t been around much. A lot has happened over the past few months, not the least of which is that I’ve been very busy. I miss everyone, and appreciate those of you who still stop in to see if there’s anything new.






Technorati Tags: Visual FoxPro - Microsoft - VFP - Software Development
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Man I Love Writing Software…

Even when I’m not getting paid to do so...

I had a couple of hours last evening and decided to look into a problem a good friend asked me to help him solve.

He’s a photographer, and has a fairly extensive website that displays his work. Up until now he’s had to run each of his photos through a manual process to place a ‘Proof’ bar across the picture before posting it to his website.

The idea was, how can we, programmatically, run a series of pictures through a process to place a ‘proof-mark’ across the photo? Doing that allows the picture to be seen, and appreciated, yet prevents it from being taken and used elsewhere with out him being compensated for his efforts.

Well, truth be told he asked me to look into this many, many, months ago, and I’m sure he thought I’d either forgotten about it, or given up on writing something to address his need.

For whatever reason, last night I was thinking about all the other Windows API functions I’d been able to employ to handle FTP downloads both from the internet and from the Main Frame at the job, that I decided to look into the GDI portion of the API and see what I could come up with.

So, for a couple of hours I wrestled with the rather terse (to me) GDI documentation, and attempted to read, and rewrite a picture, then a picture with some text added, then added a ‘bar’, then placed the text in that bar.

Eventually I had an, admittedly incomplete, little application that will read an image file, create a semi-transparent rectangle and place some text inside the rectangle that’s fairly centered as well.

Now this might not seem like much to some of you, but I assure you I was close to dancing on the desk once I got this working.

If he thinks it will meet his needs, I'll tweak it just a bit to provide an interface and he’ll be able to specify a source and target directory and just click “Go” and have all the images in that directory ‘Proofed’ in one shot…

This is not rocket science, but it is definitely one of the things I love about writing software… being handed a problem and then finding a way to solve it.

The best part? That I did it in FoxPro of course… That language that no one seems to have an interest any more, but that continues to ‘come through’ in every situation I toss at it. It’s really a shame it doesn’t get the respect it deserves!

Here’s a sample of a before:



And the after:



Keep in mind folks, this is a language designed to manipulate databases, NOT images.

Again, it’s not software to cure a disease, or change the world, but a little (less than a couple of hundred lines of code) application that does exactly what I set out to do.

It’s also a little project I had a ton of fun wrestling with!!


Technorati Tags: Visual FoxPro - Images - Decisions - Software Development
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