R – Visual Studio – rewrite / lifespan

netupgradevisual studio

FYI – I am a mainframer that moved to the .NET world a couple years ago and has a lot to learn.

We are looking at rewriting a Visual FoxPro app into .Net (most likely VB). This project is projected at 4-6 years.

We are at the very early stages of the preliminary design right now. I am seeing a LOT of information from Microsoft on VS 2010. Is there something wrong with 2005/2008 that we should be concerned about? Or, is this SOP for MS to start pushing future products this early? Is it worth waiting for 2010 to start any coding? The functional design probably won't be finished by year end (2009) anyway and we can always do mock ups in VS-2005.

Secondly, FoxPro and VB6 are in the same boat; unsupported but alive for now. Is moving to .NET smart? VB? C#? Will there come a time when MS decides that moving to VS 20xx requires another complete rewrite of old code (VB6)? Or might they eliminate VB.net or C#.net for the next 'great' thing (foxpro)? Or what about the lifespan of the .NET framework? Is it also limited until something else comes along?

We have a pretty big application with years of band-aids, updates and law changes that is already going to be a PIA to convert. We want a new platform that is going to be stable for decades to come with easy migrations upwards. Is there any development code that will be around 50 years from now? 100?

The core logic from the application hasn't changed that much since they used pen and paper. It is difficult to justify a multi-year rewrite now if it needs to be done every 10-20 years. The FoxPro app started dev in 1991, went live in 1999 and is now due to be rewritten in another language.

Mainframes are easy compared to the fluidity of Win Apps.

Here are some high level specs.

  • It's for a government office.
  • It contains highly sensitive data.
  • Web based is not an option.
  • It will be a MS Windows application only.
  • Will be moving from FoxPro tables to, probably, SQL Server 2005/8/10 (whatever is current)

I know those with working crystal balls won't reply, but what is the feel of the community for the likelihood of a programming language settling down and being available/stable long term?

Thanks for your opinions on this, I appreciate them.

Best Answer

where can i get me one of these cushy government jobs????

anyway, yes it is SOP of Microsoft to announce and demo OSes, dev tools, etc early, it doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the current tools. Since VS2003 it has always been extremely easy to migrate projects to new versions of the development enviornment if one so chooses to do so, so just start on whatever version of VS is current when you're ready to write code.

.NET will change as you're writing this but they've been really good about maintaining backward compatibilty to previous framework versions so it isn't really any issue either.

I'd recommend C# over VB.Net if you're going to rewrite anyway. VB.Net was kind of a band-aid language to get VB programmers onto .Net and is sometimes useful for compatibility, but I don't know why you'd want to start new development with it.