HMGforum.com

thanks esgici,
i can see that i'm not alone....
regards,
Luis Vasquez.

In India I'm afraid if many (among the computer developers) knows about HMG. In India, Clipper & then Foxpro was used heavely for developing professional applications. Then there's shift towards Visual Foxpro..and later on Visual Basic.

But Clipper & other xBASE applications still exists and for many they are still the lifeline of their business. Infact recently I got a call from our India's biggest IT City - Bangalore - looking for a Clipper Programmer at Senior Level. So still Clipper programmers are needed may be very few in numbers.

What I think about HMG:

1) All our Clipper programmers - who still make living out of it should know about HMG, as this is the best platform they can "upgrade" (the world says so - GUI/WINDOWS programming is an upgrade over DOS programming). HMG can give them the confidence that they can also build GUI based applications with less learning curve and without uprooting themselves from Clipper.

2) Provide solution for better way to migrate a Clipper Application to HMG

(clipper->xharbour->hmg or what?)

3)HMG should keep a tab on what VB6 and now what VB.NET can do & cannot do.
HMG should be able to provide all the features.

4) 3rd Party Tools:
When a development tool becomes popular, automatically 3rd party community grows. Which helps the main development language in many ways.

5) Stability:
It should refrain from adding user-specific requirement(s), the features should be more general purpose from where on the developer should be able to develop "that" specific feature. I want to say that it should be more generic and should add features which can be for global use. I find the other community of "MINIGUI" do make lot changes and this way the main development tool can become over-customized.

I've observed that Roberto Sir doesn't endorse "gimmick" and maintains stability above the frequent additions.

6) Web & RDBMS

I've decided to stick to HMG and develop myself to a level that - making a full fleged GUI application with all the basic features of windows programming. And be able to port it into RDBMS after that.

Interesting News:


Recently from a software company (which is infact an International Co.) a team cameup to our company for their ERP solution.
The main guy saw the interface of my HMG application on Membership (still on going process). Was impressed and
asked be about the development tools & the backend. I said backend "dbfs" and frontend "HMG"!!! Then briefed him
that its Open Source and how a Clipper/Foxpro programmer can migrate to this language for the GUI. He was very
much pleased and said today I came to know about this new thing from you. He was more delighted because their
ERP is developed on Open Source platform and how a small GUI Program is also developed in an Open Source tool
which he's not aware of it.


Thanks for going through this long post.

Regards,

Swapan

Thanks for your enlightening post Swapan. It reflects most of the Indian programmers.

Dear Swapan,

Thank you very much for your in-depth discussion.

Regards.

Sudip