"Microsoft Puts FoxPro Out to Pasture" (Article: Darryl K. Taft)

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From the article:

Dave Dierke, president and CEO of AccountMate Software, in Novato, Calif., a Microsoft partner steeped in FoxPro, said Microsoft has been signaling its intent to drop FoxPro for some time.

"Weve been watching this shoe dropping for years," Dierke said, noting that AccountMate is one of Microsofts largest FoxPro partners.

"Our code is large; its like the Queen Mary of FoxPro," Dierke said. "We have years and years of strict discipline here, and almost all of our engineers are CPAs." So with a view toward the future, "We started transitioning off of Visual FoxPro and started using some of the new development tools" in Microsofts .Net stack, Dierke said.

Another snippet:

Tommy Tan, chief technology officer at AccountMate, said the company will most likely transform its development to Visual Basic.Net.

"There are no pure conversions to convert FoxPro code to .Net, so we basically have to rewrite a lot of things," Tan said. "But Microsoft has introduced a lot of new features to do subsystems with .Net components" that can be read from FoxPro, he said.

Finally:

Dierke said he is aware that some of the FoxPro developer base will be "feeling some pain, because there has been a cult-like following, but they are also technologists first and this may give them further opportunities."

Indeed, "it may be a good thing for the industry," Dierke said. And some may welcome the change. At AccountMate, "it was getting harder and harder to keep some of our younger engineers excited about developing in FoxPro," he said.