Remember Visual Foxpro? You know the development tool that rattled out pretty decent applications in record time, I'm sure you have heard of it, if you cast your mind back.
Well Visual Foxpro was canned by Microsoft and will soon be put away in the cupboard marked "Obsolete, only to be opened if required to sue someone for patent/trademark infringement".
Now there is a new RAD tool that with a bit more flexibility could well appeal to the basic developer that goes by the name of 'Lightswitch' (and no I have no idea why the strange name).
(Note:I am not going to go into a bunch of reasons why Lightswitch isn't VFP)
Having spent the last day and a half battling with the new beastie I have come to realise that for all its power and potential (a few versions and it could be a pretty nifty tool) 'Lightswitch' has a trap all too familiar to Visual Foxpro developers.
Lightswich does not deliver working code, it delivers a Lightswitch application much the way Foxpro delivered a Foxpro application.
So what happens if you have spent a year or two developing Lightswitch applications and MS pull the plug...
Yup, you have the same problem a lot of Visual Foxpro developers now have, a code base with no way to port it.
Had it created code then it would have been a useful part of the developers tool set but unless they change this restriction the system has a nasty long term trap.
So, are you willing to commit you business to such a potentially locked in tool?
