Microsoft has announced that it will not be releasing any new versions of its Visual FoxPro development software past Version 9.0, but the company will continue to support the technology through 2015.FoxPro has been a very good friend to me over the last ten years. My first job out of college I learned to program in FoxPro 2.5 for DOS. That experience got me a great job with a big Telecom company where I made the jump to Visual FoxPro 3 and I have used it ever since. FoxPro is what got me in the door with my current employer and we are now using version 9.
Instead of releasing new versions of FoxPro, Microsoft will release core portions of the FoxPro software to its CodePlex community development site, said Alan Griver, a group manager within the Microsoft Visual Studio team, which leads the FoxPro team.
Over the last several years I have been doing more and more development in .NET, mainly C#. Whenever I have to go back and do work in FoxPro I find myself wishing they would add this or that to FoxPro, like they have it in .NET. I guess that is probably a big reason they are giving it up.
I think us FoxPro developers knew the end was coming but we kept hoping Microsoft would keep it going. I am interested to see what will come from the "release [of] core portions of the FoxPro software." Maybe some of the things that are better in FoxPro will make their way into the .NET tools.
Good bye old friend. It has been really good working with you.
