An inventory of your toolbox

[Jose Lerebours]

Ladies/Gents,

While doing some reading, I came across a short video where a young 
programmer listed some of the dying
programming languages going through 2020 and into 2021 based on trends, 
analytics of web usage and search
popularity (a weird way to evaluate a programming language).

The good news is that filePro was not listed as one of those  ;-)

Here they are: Perl, Ruby, Objective C, VB and a couple others.

The article kind of suggests to "not learn these languages" since they 
are not gaining new business or popularity; I
like to think that they become "higher" paying languages because less 
and less young developers are learning them.

This raises the question: Would you follow the trend of adopting new 
programming languages or
stick to the ones you are most comfortable with and lour your customers 
into a topology that has already entered its
final days/years?

I know, filePro has been mentioned as a "dying" language (is is a 
language?) since late '90s and it has witnessed the
death of others while it is still kicking.

While we cannot compare filePro to Python, PHP, JavaScript, C# or other 
popular languages out there has fpTech done
too little too late for filePro to see another generation of developers 
carry it for the next 10+ years?

What percentage of your business goes to filePro development/deployment?

When you hire new developers, do you hire them to help with your 
shifting to new languages and pursuit other business
opportunities or do you hire them to keep up with your filePro demand?

The one language I can think of is most similar to filePro is BBx 
(Business Basic eXtended).  I once wrote a Payroll application
and a Loan Brokerage/Processing application.  Like filePro, they were 
character based with very much the same limitations.
Unlike filePro, BBx quickly embraced the GUI world but like filePro, it 
did not take hold of the rapidly emerging world images,
www, pdf, ... and new generations of developers just looked passed it 
(https://www.basis.com/bbx).

BBx evolved much better and faster than filePro.  Development and roll 
out in BBx is a bit more time consuming than filePro
but I remember it to be a very simple and easy to navigate - in fact, 
having come into it from filePro, I felt like I was writing
filePro code with a twist.

Better stop here ... one can only imagine how much longer this could be 
if I keep going and go passed 1995.  ;-)