It's been long enough that I have nothing but rose-colored affinity for the dBase III, FoxPro and CA Clipper apps that I used to work on. In the early days, my company looked at Harbour (https://harbour.github.io/) as a "quick way" to get some of our account payable systems onto the web back in the late 90s. In the end, a full rewrite with MySQL + Perl DBI was what we chose. I remember that being far more painful. I wonder if I'll have similar rose-colored appreciation for that stack in 20 years.
There is no other stack in the last 15 years or so that I look back with the same fond affection as building business applications in Clipper. One important aspect was that software was delivered physically, and I could watch my users using them. If I made a report that helped the operator, or made a workflow easier, their happiness was immediate and nurturing. And there was an immediacy to programming in xBase - if we're building a database backed business application, which was their strong suit, there was very little standing in between us and the problem space.
I have the same pair of glasses. My first paid programming work was dBASE II and later FoxPro. I don't look back on MySQL + Perl with the same affection. You could really get stuff done in those environments.
"As platforms and operating systems proliferated in the early 1980s, the company found it difficult to port the assembly language-based dBase to target systems. This led to a rewrite of the platform in the C programming language, using automated code conversion tools. The resulting code worked, but was essentially undocumented and inhuman in syntax due to the automated conversion, a problem that would prove to be serious in the future."
OK, I am impressed. How much was done by you and how much by AI? Even if AI did most, I am still really impressed.
Brings back memories. I made a good living writing custom software for over a decade with dBase and later Clipper. Businesses had just started buying PCs. After a decade there was enough canned software on the shelves that my market changed.
I could type 'Do While .not. EOF()' in a quarter of a second on the IBM AT Model M keyboard.
It took a couple of hours but I did get WebBase-III running on my Linux/POP OS laptop. Maybe I should say Perplexity got it running.
Yeah Claude did most. I used to program since '88. But these days I supervise just like I do with overseas teams of devs. Thanks for the kind words. I hope you enjoy it.
While I'm sure this was built for fun, you have to wonder if maybe some of these tools could be useful again. With the increased power of modern computers, and some additions of modern technology like a web UI, HTTP support for data access, and the not-needed-in-the-past-but-essential-now security.
We could be entering a new age of building our own tools, llm assisted of course, but still a lot of fun.
What a nice surprise. Two days ago I glanced a book about Clipper Summer in my bookshelf and thought that it would be nice to have an environment like that for the web. Glad that someone has built it!
By the way, I'm not nostalgic about the tech of those years, but I definitely think that we unlearned a few things along the way
After learning BASIC in elementary school, the first "productive" language I learned was dBASE from my 6th grade teacher. Since he had a Clipper license too, I was thrilled to have access to something that could build a distributable, standalone exe.
I wrote several cursed things with this combo, including a simple Rogue clone that had the most powerful inventory management mechanics imaginable at the time...
One of the very cool things Fox allow us was to ship their ability to `CREATE FORM, CREATE REPORT, BROWSE, etc` so the users can customize the app with the same power as us. This is one of the most important advantages of ERPs and such made with Fox and is still unmatched.
But but... if the ERP allows the customer to do their own custom reports and forms... they won't pay you extra customization fees? Won't you think of the poor ERP vendors?
Something I learn doing this stuff +25 years is that support and custom development eat you alive, and is not profitable for small ISV like mine.
Sadly, I can't use Fox now so I more constrained and unable to give the same. That is why I rebuilding the erp as an engine (fancy name: "headless erp") and working in make a lang and maybe a custom RDBMS. But then I need a GUI builder to get the same idea!
Tangentially related. Does any one remember a book on databases for kids from the early 90s? It came with a 5.25" floppy in the back with the database software for DOS. Ive been trying to remember what this book from my childhood was but I've been unsuccessful.
Oh man, I love this. I cut my teeth on FoxPro 2.6 for DOS. You could really get things done in that environment. There were times in later years that I really missed that kind of all-in-one, fully-integrated system.
There is none. That's the point. It's a gimmick, a toy, a piece of history revived. Like you'd bring a classic car to life with modern technology. You know a happy brainfart.
I built this because I missed the dot prompt. Before SQL and ORMs, you typed USE customers, then LIST, and your data was just there. WebBase-III is that whole world rebuilt from scratch as a web app: a W3Script interpreter (lexer, recursive-descent parser, async executor) in TypeScript, backed by Node, WebSockets and SQLite. BROWSE, @ SAY GET forms, .prg programs, indexes with SEEK, reports — it's all there.
One-click try (no install) via Codespaces: https://codespaces.new/DDecoene/WebBaseIII. Open port 5173 and you're at the dot prompt.
It's deliberately a toy (AGPL to keep it that way). Happy to answer anything about the interpreter or the dBASE quirks I had to decide whether to preserve — like the 10 work-area limit, which I dropped.
https://youtu.be/bYU3CQomE5M?is=BysfXD3ybPme-DoL
Before my time, but fun to see how much could be done with it!
Rewriting it with an LLM, is surprisingly apt.
Brings back memories. I made a good living writing custom software for over a decade with dBase and later Clipper. Businesses had just started buying PCs. After a decade there was enough canned software on the shelves that my market changed.
I could type 'Do While .not. EOF()' in a quarter of a second on the IBM AT Model M keyboard.
It took a couple of hours but I did get WebBase-III running on my Linux/POP OS laptop. Maybe I should say Perplexity got it running.
Here it is again, reborn using Claude Code, using modern tech (Cloudflare, D1, Workers/TypeScript, Pages):
The Similarities Engine
https://SimilaritiesEngine.com
The albums if you're curious:
Amorphous Androgynous - The Isness - 2002-08-05
Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children - 1998-04-20
Booka Shade - Eve - 2013-11-01
Orbital - Blue Album - 2004-06-21
Rone - Tohu Bohu - 2012-10-15
We could be entering a new age of building our own tools, llm assisted of course, but still a lot of fun.
By the way, I'm not nostalgic about the tech of those years, but I definitely think that we unlearned a few things along the way
After learning BASIC in elementary school, the first "productive" language I learned was dBASE from my 6th grade teacher. Since he had a Clipper license too, I was thrilled to have access to something that could build a distributable, standalone exe.
I wrote several cursed things with this combo, including a simple Rogue clone that had the most powerful inventory management mechanics imaginable at the time...
I have this dream of revive this kind of spirit (https://tablam.org).
I started with Foxpro 2.6 and it was a blast.
One of the very cool things Fox allow us was to ship their ability to `CREATE FORM, CREATE REPORT, BROWSE, etc` so the users can customize the app with the same power as us. This is one of the most important advantages of ERPs and such made with Fox and is still unmatched.
Something I learn doing this stuff +25 years is that support and custom development eat you alive, and is not profitable for small ISV like mine.
Sadly, I can't use Fox now so I more constrained and unable to give the same. That is why I rebuilding the erp as an engine (fancy name: "headless erp") and working in make a lang and maybe a custom RDBMS. But then I need a GUI builder to get the same idea!
Just a minor inconvenience!
Yeah I was thinking of the likes of poor Oracle and SAP and their profit margin :)