Wednesday, March 14, 2007
It's not dead, Jim
By now, you’ve seen the announcement. There will not be a VFP 10, 11, 12, or v.Next. The powers that be, ie Microsoft, has spoken. Did the official word make you panic or did you panic when I blogged about the end of VFP development here and here in June, 2005?
If you did panic, why? VFP will be supported until 2015. VFP 9.0, SP2 and Sedna will be released by the end of summer. The Sedna components will belong to the community where they can be modified, extended, and enhanced. When VB 6.0 ended, did all developers stop working in VB 6.0? Nope. Are new projects being started in VB 6.0? Yep. Will new projects be started in VFP? Yep. VFP will continue to work for you and your customers for many years.
The VFP homepage will continue to exist until at least 2015. There will be Fox MVPs at least until then, and I think longer. Third-party VFP communities, such as the Universal Thread and FoxForum will continue to exist.
Are you angry at Microsoft? You shouldn’t be. It’s not Microsoft’s responsibility to keep VFP or even keep your skills current. It’s your responsibility to stay current. So, where do you go…what do you do? Here are some ideas:
- Stay with VFP. Keep writing apps as you are.
- Stay with VFP and start to integrate .Net features such as WCF, WPF, or even WinForms using the WinForms Interop Toolkit.
- Move to some other language. It doesn’t have to be a .Net language. You may want to look at Ruby on Rails, Python, Java, or something else. You can even continue working in VFP short term with the language move being long term.
- Move into another field. Perhaps you’re tired of trying to keep up with the constant churn of technology. Look at other career options.
- Retire.
- Something else?
The official end of VFP development should not be the end of your career. In fact in should be an exciting time. One that is full of new opportunities.
If you did panic, why? VFP will be supported until 2015. VFP 9.0, SP2 and Sedna will be released by the end of summer. The Sedna components will belong to the community where they can be modified, extended, and enhanced. When VB 6.0 ended, did all developers stop working in VB 6.0? Nope. Are new projects being started in VB 6.0? Yep. Will new projects be started in VFP? Yep. VFP will continue to work for you and your customers for many years.
The VFP homepage will continue to exist until at least 2015. There will be Fox MVPs at least until then, and I think longer. Third-party VFP communities, such as the Universal Thread and FoxForum will continue to exist.
Are you angry at Microsoft? You shouldn’t be. It’s not Microsoft’s responsibility to keep VFP or even keep your skills current. It’s your responsibility to stay current. So, where do you go…what do you do? Here are some ideas:
- Stay with VFP. Keep writing apps as you are.
- Stay with VFP and start to integrate .Net features such as WCF, WPF, or even WinForms using the WinForms Interop Toolkit.
- Move to some other language. It doesn’t have to be a .Net language. You may want to look at Ruby on Rails, Python, Java, or something else. You can even continue working in VFP short term with the language move being long term.
- Move into another field. Perhaps you’re tired of trying to keep up with the constant churn of technology. Look at other career options.
- Retire.
- Something else?
The official end of VFP development should not be the end of your career. In fact in should be an exciting time. One that is full of new opportunities.
// posted by Craig Berntson @ 11:02:00 AM 
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