Skip to main content

VFP - Open Letter to Microsoft

Link to a letter from the international community to Microsoft.

What's interesting about this and it should be noted is NOT that the team isn't doing what they can do - but rather a plea to get that channel wide open so that every FoxPro developer knows what they can do and what they should expect MS to do to help promote VFP.

MS has already stated that VFP has at least 6-8 more years ahead, if not longer. Asking how long now is almost a redundant point. What is more valuable is how MS can help promote the product.

For example, there was some buzz right before VFP 8 was released that MS might get some marketing materials about FoxPro into the hands of government or Fortune 500 companies. I've never seen it so I don't know if that ever happened but the Brazilian letter brings up a great point about Clipper. Many companies still think of Fox just as a replacement for Clipper. Lack of awareness? Definitely.

But the issue for MS becomes this -

1. how can Ken, John, Randy et al with their limited staff hit every company?
2. What type of marketing would be helpful to YOU (developers) in talking to existing customers? MS did publish a few items about FoxPro when 8.0 was released but maybe they weren't clear enough?

Would it be better if they printed a million copies and sent them to every customer who ever owned VFP?

I just recently got an email from someone in Canada who basically said "How can i be a great programmer in visual foxpro if i MUST learn how to use other kinds of programming languages ?" While this may be a little naive (of course, you have to accept other ideas and realize there are other languages) - it says something very important.

FoxPro solutions work on their own - so why not promote them that way as well?

VFP - Open Letter to Microsoft

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Elevating Project Specifications with Three Insightful ChatGPT Prompts

For developers and testers, ChatGPT, the freely accessible tool from OpenAI, is game-changing. If you want to learn a new programming language, ask for samples or have it convert your existing code. This can be done in Visual Studio Code (using GitHub CoPilot) or directly in the ChatGPT app or web site.  If you’re a tester, ChatGPT can write a test spec or actual test code (if you use Jest or Cypress) based on existing code, copied and pasted into the input area. But ChatGPT can be of huge value for analysts (whether system or business) who need to validate their needs. There’s often a disconnect between developers and analysts. Analysts complain that developers don’t build what they asked for or ask too many questions. Developers complain that analysts haven’t thought of obvious things. In these situations, ChatGPT can be a great intermediary. At its worst, it forces you to think about and then discount obvious issues. At best, it clarifies the needs into documented requirements. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Blogs and RSS come to Microsoft.com

MS has just introduced their portal and it's pretty comprehensive. Nothing quite like learning that some people use AIM instead of MSN messenger, or that there really may be a need for supporting 4 monitors ( Cyrus Complains ) However, it's really a great sign that MS is serious about supporting the blogging community which seems to have um, exploded in size in the past year. Blogs and RSS come to Microsoft.com
1 comment
Read more

I’m Supposed to Know

https://programmingzen.com/im-supposed-to-know/ Great post for developers who are struggling with unrealistic expectations of what they should know and what they shouldn't. Thirty-forty years ago, it was possible to know a lot about a certain environment - that environment was MS-DOS (for non Mac/UNIX systems). . There was pretty much only a handful of ways to get things going. Enter networking. That added a new wrinkle to how systems worked. Networks back then were finicky. One of my first jobs was working on a 3COM + LAN and it then migrated to LAN Manager. Enter Windows or the graphical user interface. The best depiction of the complexity Windows (OS/2, Windows NT, etc) introduced that I recall was by Charles Petzold (if memory serves) at a local user group meeting. He invited a bunch of people on the stage and then acted as the Windows "Colonel", a nice play on kernel. Each person had a role but to complete their job they always had to pass things back to h...
Post a Comment
Read more