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The LA Fox Developer Newsletter
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June 1994
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Books and Toys
(Con't from Page 8)
We’ve all been waiting for Y. Alan Griver's sequel to
The FoxPro (2.0) Codebook.
After a lot of talk related to a “2.5 Codebook”,
The FoxPro 2.6 Codebook
is finally on the stands. That is, if you’re lucky enough to find it. It seems to disappear as soon as it hits the shelves.
The new
Codebook
is a substantial improvement over the previous one. This one even has an index.
All kidding aside, this effort by YAG was worth the wait. At three times the length of the original (748 pages vs 260 pages, including the index), this volume not only illustrates YAG’s attention to his following, but his growing maturity as an author as well. This book covers development issues on all of
FoxPro’s
current platforms (DOS, Windows, and Mac). The book is also fleshed out with articles that have been previously published in FoxPro Advisor. (These articles are integrated into the rest of the text, but if you have a good recall of his published articles, you’ll remember seeing them. One example is an article that was published in EPA/April ‘93, titled “Spiffing Up Your Apps” that appears in the book as part of the chapter titled “Usability Techniques”.)
As always, YAG emphasizes reusable code and objects. But other issues addressed relate to what he calls “the big picture” of developing applications
issues that relate to communicating with clients and with the development team; technical standards and guidelines (which many of us already follow); multi-user programming; testing; a very basic discussion of DDE and OLE; and the included application
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"Codebook.PJX".
The bottom line on this book? Throw the old one away (2.0
Codebook),
buy this one, order the companion disk, and dive into it. The new book is better written, examples are clearer and more abundant, and if you can’t remember where you read something, you can look it up in the index.
The FoxPro 2.6 Codebook
lists for $34.95 and is available from Micro-Center for $29.75. It has also been spotted at Software, etc. The companion
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disk is available directly from Flash Creative Management (YAG's company) for $24.95.
[I was cleaning out some old files last week and came across an old issue of The Green Letter, a newsletter that Adam Green used to publish for the X-Base community. It was dated February 1992 and the cover story was titled “First Impressions of dBASE for Windows’. It made for interesting historic reading since Green migrated from dBase to FoxPro to PowerBuilder since that letter was published. Here are some excerpts:
]
“...My overall impression of
dBASE for Windows
is very favorable. It is a well thought out product, that is fun to work with and produces very flashy applications.. .There is no doubt that
dBASE for Windows
will have a major impact on the X-Base world. The only doubt is when this will happen. I already made my prediction last month that
dBASE for Windows
will ship between September ‘92 and January ‘93.. .One factor that should be weighed against the enthusiasm of gurus like myself over
dBASE for Windows,
is that the greatest amount of profit... comes soon after a new product is released.”
We’ve come up with an easy way to submit articles to the
LA Fox Developer Newsletter
one that has been overlooked for a long time.
You can submit your articles to either Chuck Williams
(72330,2326) or Barry Lee (72723,3422) on
Compuserve.
These articles can be on any FoxPro-related topic, whether it concerns a new technique you’ve discovered, a certain development technique you may favor over others, book reviews, etc.
The quality of this newsletter really depends on the members that support it, not just read it. And I think we’d all be surprised by the useful information that could be circulated around the membership.
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