Antiquated Software

[Fairlight]

>From inside the gravity well of a singularity, John Esak shouted:
> > Walter said: [attribution inserted  --FLT]
> > At the end of the day it comes from interoperablity. Especially
> > at the database
> > level.
> >
> > Eventually you quit fighting the good fight and give into "better
> > tools" than we
> > have with filePro.
> >
> > Ask the people again who said it was antiquated... Do they
> > consider it that
> > because the database is non-standard and proprietary?
> 
> At first, I thought you were going to offer something useful... then you
> come up with this incredibly "leading" and thoroughly unproductive question.
> To what purpose? Flame baiting, no doubt. Interoperability can and has been

I didn't get that impression, and while he's one of the people I consider
forward-looking on the list, I've never considered him the type to start
trouble for the sake of starting trouble.

What -I- took away from his question was a valid question to put to the
people complaining:  "Why do you feel, exactly, that this is 'antiquated'?"

The point is to narrow it down the way Ken does with bug reports and
problems here.  WHAT, precisely, do you mean by "doesn't work"?  You know,
like when Dennis insists something "isn't working" for 15 posts in a row
until he finally gives details because Ken has asked "what doesn't work"
15 times back. :) Same thing.  So in this particular case, if they (the
detractors) come back with a look and feel argument, you can either make
some adjustments or correct their misperception about that importance
(especially about GUIness of DB front-ends).  If they come back with a
real, tangible, functional shortcoming (be it real or perceived), one can
address that--quite possibly -without- dumping fP.

I honestly think he was using Ken's approach towards addressing something
like that.  Mind you, Walter's used a lot of standards-based stuff (yes, I
know all of it was conceived years to decades after fP, point conceded--but
the stuff exists NOW, and fP should make efforts to keep up better than
they have, arguably) besides fP.  The point where you start working in
largely heterogeneous environments is when you start to appreciate how
much of the work of making interoperability work is actually forced on
the developer due to lack of progress in the last 15 years by the core
of filePro itself, and that will simply come out in one's tone as either
weariness or frustration--sometimes with a dash of sarcasm or cynicism if
one's been through the loop enough times, or if the "one" is me (or both).

Almost anyting can be done in fP with enough code and/or middleware.  The
point is to find and address -exact- concerns, rather than sweeping,
generalised statements about being antiquated or the like.  I personally
thought that's where Walter was coming from, and didn't consider it
flamebait.  YMMV.

> <rant>

BTW, you never closed your rant tag, John!  Eek!

mark->