new features?

[Fairlight]

On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 03:28:48PM -0500, Jose Lerebours, the prominent
pundit, witicized:
>
> The more PHP I develop the more I realized that speed of development
> is not really unique to filePro.  In fact, giving that your PHP based
> applications are (a) cross-platform, (b) ODBC Compliant, (c) Multi-DB
> Engine Compatible, (c) fast development, (d) fast deployment, (e) low
> cost, (f) huge community base, (g) global market, etc, etc, etc. gives me
> ground to argue that in the end, PHP is a faster and more cost effective
> development tool than filePro.
>
> I have developed many PHP applications to integrate with filePro.  Some
> of them include: Graph/Charting, Cargo Release, Search/Query Page,
> Warehousing, Trucking, Billing, Check writing interface, etc.
>
> Those for whom I've written these applications are very happy.  Using
> PHP + XHTML + AJAX has enabled me to write very jazzy applications.  I
> would say that they do not dump filePro maily because they have too much
> invested and fear a new start.

And is it just me, or is the actual interfacing the clunkiest part of the
entire deal?  I doubt it's just me.  The problem is that sockets are
generally (IMHO) a bad option, if they're an option at all (some won't move
to 5.6, period), and any other import/export is basically file-oriented,
and thus either very kludgy or very complex--or both.

It's actually cleaner and faster to write something wholesale in something
else than to interface fP with a partial solution.  There are things you
can do to minimise these issues, but with the current toolset fP-Tech
provides (ie., no fP-API vaporware has materialised to date), it's nowhere
near wholly mitigatable.

> You might as well get packing and moving in a new direction now.  By
> the time they develop anything for this, there will be some other short
> coming thus leaving you behind one way or the other.

I'll second that.  There are enough problems with fP that I don't think one
would even have to wait for something to crop up.  The problems and
limitations are there already, and screen size is just one of them.

Then again, it's not a trivial expense to rewrite systems between
platforms.

> >Of course my laziness has been fighting my smart decision making for
> >several years

There's never a good time.  That's the bottom line, if you're running a
business on software.  There's just never a convenient or good time to do
an upgrade, migration, or whatnot.  You need to be live and stay live, not
live in a limbo between two worlds.

> Anyway, just meant to say if you can develop in anything else like JAVA,
> PHP, PERL, PYTHON, .NET, etc. - go ahead and get started a little at
> a time; you'll be surprised how much work you get done when you get
> enthusiastic.

.NET?!?!?  And I was just starting to accept the fact you'd embraced PHP,
Jose.  I can even justify recommending Java.  But .NET?!?!?!?  *faint*

At least use something that's 99% cross-platform.

mark->