[Edu-sig] Coming from FoxPro...

[Kirby Urner]

Python is a lot more elegant than xBase in many ways,
but then those of us coming from xBase appreciate the
continuity.

For example having a ">>> " (chevron) instead of a
dot prompt (". ") is superficial whereas what's deep is
having REPL in both cases.  Ever since APL, I've been
biased towards interpreters I could "chat with".

xBase came out of Jet Propulsion Labs (CA) as a
satellite controller language and was adapted for
commercial use as dBase II (initially) surviving through
dBase V under Borland, with FoxPro a sister
implementation of the same language.

Microsoft purchased FoxPro to compete with Borland
as in those days many believed xBase in all its flavors,
was to be one of three or four pillar languages going
forward.  FoxPro Advisor was a commercial magazine
in stores.  I even published an article in it (March 1994).

In xBase we had keywords 'scatter' and 'gather' and
I find myself using those verbs in explaining * and ** in
my work as a Python mentor for O'Reilly School.

On the arguments side, *seq makes syntactic sense,
as it does on the parameters side (of calling a callable).

Likewise **hash_of_stuff:  we need to explain these
as complementary uses.

When you call a function with *seq as your argument,
you're "scattering" a sequence ("exploding it") into
positionals, whereas with def F(*seq): as a parameter,
you're "gathering" ("imploding") positionals coming in.

Ditto with dicts:  scatter a dict into keyword arguments
on the calling side (**d is an argument), gather incoming
keyword arguments into a dict when called (**d is a
parameter).

Ed Leafe is another VFP (Visual FoxPro) refugee
I meet at Pycons and OSCONs.  Ed worked on
Dabo to help VFP developers continue on in Python.

I met another brilliant guy here in Portland, Jim Heuer,
(I worked for him briefly some years back), who
juggles Python, VFP and C all in one major SaaS
application that routes trucks all over.  He's a
transportation engineer and a spry software
developer.  VFP attracted a lot of talented coders
in my experience.

Microsoft is discontinuing its support of VFP this
year.  No migration to 64-bit architecture planned.
No next edition in the pipeline.  That's partly why
we're getting a lot of refugees in Python World.

Microsoft maybe hoped to shepherd these refugees
to Visual Basic perhaps, but no VFP progammer
I know likes VB all that much (xBase was so superior
to BASIC all along).

That leaves other .NET platforms but C# is so low level.
We can speculate as to how the diaspora will pan
out.  Some may just keep using VFP anyway as just
because Microsoft no longer loves it does not mean
one must abandon ship just yet.  Maybe time to get
the life rafts ready?

Kirby

Links:

http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?116057-substitue-for-scatter-memavr-and-gather-memvar-of-foxpro-in-vb

http://dabodev.com/

https://mail.python.org/pipermail/portland/2015-January/001663.html
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