Skip to main content

5 Great Reasons to attend Virtual FoxFest


What's coming up?

Virtual FoxFest is coming up soon (sessions start October 14th). Like last year, the conference is entirely virtual yet includes great breakdown rooms and sessions to add that nice one-on-one feel that you get in person.

It's also staggered so you can choose which days you want to attend - October 14th, 20th and 26th. This is great if you can't break away for a consecutive three days.

But really, I've gone through the sessions and I see five great sessions that I'm eager to check out.

1. A Decade of Thor (Rick Schummer)
Thor has been an extension for Visual FoxPro that many developers swear by, yet many don't know even exists. Visual FoxPro's built-in extensions are great but Jim Nelson's Thor supercharges your IDE. I can't believe it's been ten years - so Rick's session should be able to not just whet your appetite but give you all the reasons you should be using it.

2. VFP C++ compiler. 
Last year, we saw DotNetX as well as VFP Advanced. VFP Advanced is still going strong with great support for 64-bit applications.  But this session has me intrigued. An add-on to provide both 64-bit support AND secure. Sign me up!

3. AWS Hosted VFP
Everything seems to use AWS these days so why not VFP? Using JDBC for accessing data and linking directly to AWS is a great way to bring your VFP application into the next generation of tools.

4. Building and Consuming REST-Based API with VFP
You've seen REST APIs even if you aren't aware of them. While VFP has always been more SOAP-based, the rest of the development world has moved to REST so why shouldn't you? I know Rick will be showcasing the West-Wind implementations but understanding how and why REST solutions are needed makes this session super exciting.

5. Multithreading in VFP
If you're building web-based services for VFP or also want to give your application a smoother experience, you want to use multi-threading. Kevin is going to use Christof's DMULT.DLL  - something I've never heard of.

There are a bunch of other exciting sessions at Virtual FoxFest including SQL Server reporting and document management, modernization of VFP and more.

What sessions are you excited for?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Merry Christmas

Whether you celebrate now, have already celebrated your past holiday, are planning to, or not, I hope you find yourself surrounded by family and those you love during this holiday season and are able to remember fondly those who are not with you. We often find ourselves buried in work, or too distracted by other problems, to share and remember a few moments with those closest to us. So many of us are separated by huge distances, we often find it easier to focus on those who are out of arm's reach yet so easy to connect with online, instead of those who are right beside us. So do yourself a favour, put down the keyboard (stylus, mouse, etc) and spend that time. I know I will. Merry Christmas. Powered by ScribeFire .

Who Wants To Be Logical? I Do! I Don't! (with Claude)

In my book, Towards Consciousness, I explore PET , a theory that attempts to explain consciousness and possibly how it might apply to AI. As part of the conversations with AI series, I've included this conversation with Claude.AI in which we were talking about something very different and yet the conversation redirected itself back to PET. For the record, there is no such thing as "Colfsity". A It's interesting to me that people want to proclaim their distinction from being rigid and unlike machines, yet they also complain that the "best" people keep a rigid schedule, regular routines and logic understanding of issues. That's a perceptive observation about a real tension in how people think about themselves and what they value. There does seem to be this paradox where rigidity is simultaneously rejected as "robotic" or inhuman, yet praised when it appears as discipline, consistency, or logical thinking. I think part of what's happening is t...

Programmers vs. Developers vs. Architects

I received an email this morning from Brandon Savage 's newsletter. Brandon's a PHP guru (works at Mozilla) but his newsletter and books have some great overall perspectives for developers of all languages. However, this last one (What's the difference between developers and architects?) kind of rubs me the wrong way. Either that, or I've just missed the natural inflation of job descriptions. (maybe, it's like the change in terminology between Garbage man and Waste Engineer or Secretary and Office Administrator) So maybe it's just me - but I think there's still a big difference between Programmer, Developer and then of course, architect. The key thing here is that every role has a different perspective and every one of those perspectives has value. The original MSF create roles like Product Manager, Program Manager, Developer, Tester, etc - so every concept may pigeon hole people into different roles. But the statements Brandon makes are often distinction...