Re: Mildly OT: dBASE IV

From: Gene Wirchenko <genew_at_ucantrade.com.NOTHERE>
Date: Fri, 26 May 2006 14:30:25 -0700
Message-ID: <gjse72lq86fdbblj0bqm2ruuu3qenrdttq_at_4ax.com>


On 26 May 2006 13:52:44 -0700, "Marshall" <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com> wrote:

>I randomly surfed my way to a PC World article on the
>"25 Worst Tech Tech Products of All Time." It was actually
>better done than those sorts of things usually are.
>
>I was interested to see item #5: dBASE IV.
>
>http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,125772,pg,3,00.asp#dbase
>
>Roughly, the blurb claims the company went from market leader
>to nowheresville on the "strength" of this single release.
>
>I vaguely remember Ashton-Tate as a once-was tech giant.
>
>Anyone have any stories about this they'd care to share?

     After dBASE IV 1.0 was going to be late, a company exec said that no, they were just widening the delivery window. Many people's consulting business suffered because of clients waiting for IV. IV 1.0 was quite buggy.

     It broke some of my code that had been working just fine. Here a line of code that broke:

          zap
The zap command empties a table. Unfortunately, if you did so more than once while a table was open -- and I did so with a temp file -- it actually inserted a blank record.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko Received on Fri May 26 2006 - 23:30:25 CEST

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