Skip to main content

DevCon 2004 Keynote with the Fox Team Part 1

20 Years of the Fox - The Road to Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9.0 ( a bit spotty but I'll clean it up later)
After a start of auspicious SNL videos, Ken got started with the Road to Visual FoxPro
Ken, Calvin, Yag, Randy Brown , Richard Stanton
What Was Not In The Keynote
No Markus with a short haircut
Jim Duffy singing and dancing
Drew Speedie in slow motion
Rick Strahl working on his three sessions
Toni Feltman with a fox tail
Doug Hennig in a swimming suite
No cheesy slides
DAO, RDO, ADO, Jet , MSMQ Demo
Agenda
VFP 9.0
Most of VFP 9 will be demos
FoxBase+ 1.02 - 1984
Ken actually showed FoxPro 2.6 DOS - 1989 (with his legal version of Fox 2x when he was working at Flash)
Antarctica, Jan 2004 - Susan Graham went on vacation and ran into Dave Fulton
They had a great Interview with Dr. Dave recorded on Monday.
More of less aggrssive pursuing hobbies, collecting and playing violins, photography etc.
Not as much programming unless forced to - working with video software (all MS, of course <bg>)
Rushmore- always had a huge affection for it now that it's been included in more MS products
Remembering the 1991 Comdex
When they demonstrated Rushmore, they invited everyone back to Perrysburg
one guy who said "you can't read the data that fast"
So Dr Dave couldn't believe VFP is still alive after 20 years. His first assumption on joinng Fox was that they would merge Access and FoxPro -" it's astonishing...it's like the Fox has 9 lives...."
Richard McAniff, VP MS Office came up and reminisced how he used to work on LAN Manager and then went to work with Access. He wasn't familiar with databases and someone asked him to work on Fox. Why don't you go to Perrysburg and meet Dr. Dave?
He joined the Fox team as the MS Program Manager to introduce Fox 2.5. He said we're going to ship on x date even though dev said we can't (and they did).
Got started working with VFP 3.0 and Eric Rudder and other people who have really gone on pretty big in Visual FoxPro.
To this day, Richard still says "we used to do this in FoxPro".
He now runs Excel, Access and Office programability but his "heart" is still with Fox and with that he introduced Visual FoxPro 9...
Cue the music from 2001 a space odyssey as Mike Stewart showed the Big box...
More in next post....

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

Friend vs Therapist vs LLM: Shades of Grey

The conversations with AI series brings up a single point and then compares it between different LLM engines. These types of conversations were one of the many contributing factors to my writing of " Towards Consciousness " that explores the benefits and issues of creating a conscious AI. In this scenario, I was interested in seeing how an LLM might differ from a friend or therapist on issues that may have nuanced responses or contexts. In doing so, I came up with an interesting discussion on shades of grey. My Premise: Is it a bit strange to be using an LLM as a sober second thought? Every time I walk down this path of “why use an LLM to do certain things”, I come back to the alternatives that people like to say. “Why not bring it up with a friend?” A friend typically has your back or will say whatever to support their own agenda. “A therapist?” That’s someone who is “trained” to be impartial. But a computer? A computer is impartial based on two logical outcomes. If you say ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Respect

Respect is something humans give to each other through personal connection. It’s the bond that forms when we recognize something—or someone—as significant, relatable, or worthy of care. This connection doesn’t have to be limited to people. There was an  article  recently that described the differing attitudes towards AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini (formerly Bard). Some people treat them like a standard search while others form a sort of personal relationship — being courteous, saying “please” and “thank you”. Occasionally, people share extra details unrelated to their question, like, ‘I’m going to a wedding. What flower goes well with a tuxedo?’ Does an AI “care” how you respond to it? Of course not — it reflects the patterns it’s trained on. Yet our interaction shapes how these tools evolve, and that influence is something we should take seriously. Most of us have all expressed frustration when an AI “hallucinates”. Real or not, the larger issue is that we have hi...
Post a Comment
Read more