Would like your opinions on outdated languages

[stumben32]

My company to a large degree still uses Foxpro ( versions 5-9 ) for many of our systems. As you know, its no longer supported by microsoft. For all its shortcomings for what WE DO it has been a tremendous tool generating a ton of profit. Quick, easy fast down and dirty.

We have broken into .NET but one thing lead to another and that has really created a division in the company. Tons of people are desperately still trying to get the .NET versions fully functional - ( great language but... we took it to extremes so its taking forever ). Meanwhile the outdated cash cows are keeping the company afloat.

But how long can we keep doing this with Foxpro? Its causing other issues for us as well:
-Recruiting people is getting TOUGH. The economy is weird and nobody wants to come to work with outdated technology. Those that DO usually have a ton of experience under their belt and are looking for big $$.

-Retaining people is becomming a challenge. People are starting to leave so they can go work on the latest and greatest.

It is not just fox pro mind you - we use it in conjunction with SQL Server, XML....yadda yadda.

Anyone else in a similar boat? I am a strong advocate of us biting the bullet and breaking in to new languages, but it is a HARD Sell and a HARD transition with this many systems... generating this much profit.

 

[aceO07]

We're doing Foxpro here too. I joined not knowing Foxpro, but jumped in. I knew that the company was planning on converting, so it wasn't a big deal to learn Foxpro as long as it wasn't for a long time. I also have a few years experience with Omnis (Raining Data) so it wasn't a major task to learn Foxpro.

We've currently converting over to Ruby and Ruby on Rails. Foxpro was showing its age and there were some things that we wanted to do that wasn't as easy or available.

 

[imported_Dhaval00]

Hence, SDLC. When IT and Business need to co-exist, every component's life must be pointed out explicitly. You can't have people supporting software for 30 years in the future. Find a business sponsor [if you've enough power] to upgrade. Sooner or later your company will run into a threshold where in every FoxPro resource is unavailable or gone. Then they will spend money of infrastructure upgrade... apparently after experiencing major losses?

 

[degibson]

The longevity of your language depends on how conservative your industry is. There is still COBOL in use from decades ago for some banking software, for instance, simply because the risk of production bugs is just too great to warrant actually switching to another language. If Foxpro meets your needs, why change? A lot of companies have a steep learning curve, and finding quality people is always a hard thing to do, regardless of your infrastructure. Then again, if Foxpro can't do what you want it to do (anymore), move to something else. But don't move just for the sake of modernization -- .NET is just this decade's flavor.

Remember: languages themselves never die -- just the programmers.