Visual FoxPro 1984-2007...A moment of silence please...

  • Article

It's official, after almost 6 years of speculation, the era of Visual FoxPro (formerly FoxBASE and FoxPro) is coming to an end.  Those of you who, like myself, once proudly proclaimed "I am a PROFESSIONAL FoxPro programmer" or more recently Visual FoxPro, sit down with a glass of brandy and a cigar and tell the young-ins about a great legend, the legend of FoxPro.  From a time when if you said Object Oriented Programming, most people would have looked at you and scoffed.  When there was Visual Basic for DOS, and C++ (if it existed) was for Computer Scientist (no, not the ones with a BA in Computer Science, the real Computer Scientist with the white lab coats and PhD's).

Here's some syntax for the "Way back machine."  I may be a little off, but I can't find my FoxPro Bible book; it's in the basement with my dBASE III+ programmers reference.  Please comment if I am off on the syntax.

Use myDatabase.dbf as MyDatabase
Do While not EOF()
Print MyDatabase.LastName + ", " + MyDatabase.FirstName
Skip
Enddo

So here's the good news.  Microsoft plans to support FoxPro 9.0 through 2010 and offer extended support through 2015.  Keep in mind that we are releasing one more version codenamed Sedna, see my post on it here (https://blogs.msdn.com/publicsector/archive/2007/03/02/visual-foxpro-ctp-just-released-that-s-right-visual-foxpro-still-exists.aspx). 

I know that there are not as many Visual FoxPro developers out there anymore in the wild, mostly hunted down by new languages like .NET, but I want to remind everyone of how simple the syntax was, yet elegant, and how powerful the engine was.  Remember, for a long time the FoxPro database engine was considered the fastest thing out there, even over early versions of RDBMS engines.

Ah well, time moves on, and as we bid our old friend goodbye, keep in mind that Microsoft will still support your soon to be "legacy" Visual FoxPro applications through 2010 with an option of extended support through 2015.

Go to Alan Griver's blog (https://blogs.msdn.com/yag/) to read the official statement and particulars. 

~ Robert Shelton