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Visual FoxPro (Discontinued) vs. GNU Emacs

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Visual FoxPro (Discontinued)

    Score3.7 out of 10
    N/AFoxPro is a programming language and DBMS formerly supported by Microsoft, now at its End of Life.N/A

    GNU Emacs

    Score8 out of 10
    N/AGNU Emacs is described as a free extensible and customizable text editor for the Lisp programming language.N/A
    Pricing
    Visual FoxPro (Discontinued)GNU Emacs
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Visual FoxPro (Discontinued)GNU Emacs
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Best Alternatives
    Visual FoxPro (Discontinued)GNU Emacs
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    User Ratings
    Visual FoxPro (Discontinued)GNU Emacs
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    8.2
    (4 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.2
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Visual FoxPro (Discontinued)GNU Emacs
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Discontinued Products
    Legacy applications already on VFP are a good candidate. If you plan to move to iOS and Android apps, VFP is not for you. Also, in future access to VFP programmers may be limited. You could use VFP as a powerful database tool. I know of many programmers who love to exploit the features of VFP to create easy to use applications.
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    Open Source
    Emacs is best utilized on a Unix system where it can be easily installed and accessed. It allows for quick editing of files on a system whether you are accessing it locally through the console or remotely via an ssh connection. Once users familiarize themselves with the Emacs shortcuts, it becomes a pretty efficient text manipulation program. On a standard Windows computer, it is less likely to use Emacs for code editing, especially if you have a local repository on your host machine.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Discontinued Products
    • Treat data from files
    • Reporting
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    • GNU Emacs is a text editor that can do almost anything that you want to do with it. It is fairly easy to extend the functionality using Emacs Lisp with a large library available.
    • It can be easily customized using themes as well as custom code to change the look and feel as well as how everything works.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Discontinued Products
    • Microsoft stopped selling this and stopped supporting it in 2014. It still works on Windows 10, but if you have a problem, you are on your own.
    • The look and feel of screens and displayed text is getting a little dated.
    • It's really designed for desktop/server environments rather than the cloud.
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    • Emacs is old, so it's a little crufty and not too easy to pick up and start using. There is a community package called Spacemacs that simplifies a lot of things that you do with Emacs. It is probably better suited to beginners.
    • Sometimes, the choices that were made to integrate certain functionality change the basic models for that functionality. This is seen primarily in the version control system support, where multiple version control systems are supported and "unified" to a standard Emacs-y way of doing things. This can be confusing to the new user not familiar with the Emacs way.
    • Emacs has, as its foundation, a lisp interpreter. This means that the extension language for Emacs is emacs-lisp. Some people find lisp hard to understand and have difficulties writing Emacs extension code, or understanding existing code.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Discontinued Products
    There are several easy to use and powerful features of VFP that programmers like.
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    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Discontinued Products
    Although MS has discontinued support of VFP there is a good community of programmers that are available for help. In fact we have several programmers at Apptread that are skilled not only in VFP but also .NET so that if there is a need to migrate some parts of applications to .NET , it is easy for us to do that.
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    Open Source
    Everything that you need to know about Emacs can be found on the internet. There are many Emacs "cheat sheets" that list out all of the shortcuts for Emacs. There are videos on how to use Emacs. Emacs is easily installed using the standard Linux package managers and can also be easily updated through them as well. There are tutorials on how to customize Emacs to your liking.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Discontinued Products
    We are only using FoxPro because it is the only way to add custom plugins into the software we use to manage our stock. FoxPro is a semi-oriented object language and should clearly not be compared with recent technologies.
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    Of course, Vim is a good contender for comparison as well, so I'll include it. I find Emacs much easier to learn, which will help speed up productivity for newer users. It seems much faster than VIM and VSCode, especially under load. It's highly highly customizable, in ways other editors don't stack up against. Its lack of bloat also is a nice addition to a great product.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Discontinued Products
    • Positive impact is that the value of FoxPro applications has continued to increase over the years, so we are in high demand for our services.
    • Negative impact is that sometimes you have difficult to support scenarios where you might have to spend many hours to just keep something functional.
    • A negative impact is that this language is taught in very few places, either in schools, or private learning centers.
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    • Emacs is free software, there is no cost at all.
    • It has helped tremendously in situations where many, or large, log files need to be searched.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots