Visual FoxPro Programmers
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We are using FoxPro for few customers. There are still many businesses that are using VFP although Microsoft stopped supporting it years ago. Many legacy applications, particularly BFSI, Healthcare, Real Estate, are running on Visual FoxPro. These software applications and products are being used by hundreds of businesses, that are now so much hooked to VFP, that they do not want to switch to newer technologies. As a result, there are a wide range of companies across market segments that need constant support to their VFP products.
We at Apptread (an ImpactQA company) have helped several customers in maintaining their legacy applications on FoxPro. So much so that we even automated the regression suite making rolling out new features, easy.
There are not too many developers today that are willing to work on VFP but there are still a bunch of companies that are keeping the VFP developers engaged. Some customers have started moving their VFP applications to .NET but that would also need an understanding of VFP code. As a result folks with good VFP and .NET experience are most sought after programmers.
VFP has many advantages over other new age tech. Looks like VFP may not have a great future but it is certainly here to stay for few more years. It would be too early to write it off.
Pros
- Structured language easy access to database.
- Access to VFP programmers.
- 3rd party plugins and wizards available that help in application development.
Cons
- Moving to iOS and Android is not possible.
- Support from Microsoft.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
