Category: FoxPro

For a while now, I have debated whether or not to post this entry.  About six months ago, I wrote most of this article, then decided not to post it.  So yeah, I’m wishy-washy on this one.  Since then, Microsoft has put a lot of emphasis on HTML5 and introduced Windows 8 and the Metro UI, leaving a lot of existing MS developers wondering about the future of their previous technology choices.  With that in mind, I think it’s good to look at Microsoft’s treatment of VFP and how their decision processes work in regard to development tools.

Can you believe it has been over four years since Microsoft posted A Message to the Community and announced that Microsoft would cease development on Visual FoxPro?  It has been over three years since Microsoft released VFP9 SP2 and Sedna, and over six years since VFP 9.0 was released!  While I was saddened that Microsoft chose to cancel VFP, I appreciated the sensitivity the Fox Team, particularly YAG, showed to the Fox community.  However, at the time, I wished Microsoft would have been more transparent and given a more thorough explanation of their reasons for making that decision.  YAG may have been constrained in what he could/should say in his position, and I imagine there was some disagreement with the decision within the Fox Team, but those are just guesses.  Regardless, we didn’t get an official statement from Microsoft, other than it was happening, and the Fox community was left to piece together the reasons.  That led to comments like “writing on the wall”, “head in the sand” and conjecture on lack of sales vs. lack of marketing, etc.  Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that VFP was not a “strategic product” for Microsoft, but why was that and what does it mean?  Answers lead to more questions, but I think that is worth exploring.

Note that this blog entry is just more conjecture/opinion.  I don’t have any more facts than you do.  I am just putting all the pieces I have on the table and building a picture.  Over the past couple of years, I have debated whether or not to write this, because it is a negative subject and obvious flame-bait.  But I think enough time has passed now and it could be a good thing.  To move forward, you have to let go of the past, and this has helped me do that.  I still use VFP as my primary tool, but this has helped me “get over” Microsoft’s decision.  It may also be helpful in deciding where you want to go in the future.  Now, I am in no way defending Microsoft or saying I agree with their decision.  I am just trying to understand why they would make a business decision to discontinue FoxPro.  Statements here may be “obvious” or “old news”, but I think it is helpful to pull it all together.

“Not a Strategic Product”

Enough disclaimers, let’s get to the subject at hand.  Microsoft has stated for some time that FoxPro was not a strategic product for them.  What does that mean?  To my mind, a strategic product is one that Microsoft would invest in heavily and recommend as the primary path for their customers.  MS would build upon the technology and form an entire “strategy” around it.  VB was strategic.  COM was strategic. .NET is strategic.  Fox was not.  Why not?  To answer that, I think you have to look at why Microsoft bought Fox Software in the first place.

Why Buy Fox?

So, why did Microsoft buy Fox Software.  I will quote an article Jordan Powell wrote in FoxTalk when Access 1.0 and FoxPro 2.5 were about to ship:

Microsoft was working on its Access DBMS which uses a modern variant of the BASIC language. It had to have been embarrassing for Microsoft to have such a glaring hole in its product lineup. They had no DBMS, and their partnership with Ashton-Tate failed to get Microsoft SQL Server off the ground. Some of the marketing types at MS realized that FoxPro was the best version of X-Base out there, and had been trying to talk Bill Gates into doing something about it. They knew that the X-Base language commanded a huge segment of the market and that a product which used the X-Base language would get them into the DBMS market in a big way. They had the marketing resources to put behind FoxPro, and Fox had some interesting and useful technology — not to mention some very talented people, the kind Microsoft likes.

More recently, Ken Levy wrote the following in his blog:

The purchase of Fox Software for $173 million in 1992 was very strategic for Microsoft, and was the biggest corporate purchase Microsoft had ever made up until that time. Borland had purchased Aston-Tate’s which included dBase III and IV, and had Paradox. And growing in popularity at the time was PowerBuilder as the king of client/server tools, with Sybase releasing PowerBuilder 12 last year ironically based on the free Visual Studio Shell runtime. Microsoft needed three things from the Fox Software deal – the Fox developer team, the Fox technology, and the customer market share of FoxPro/FoxBase. Microsoft was just starting work on Access and it was more targeting power users, but there was still some overlap. Visual Basic was still in its early days.

Basically, Microsoft wanted a stronger presence in the database market and they were in severe need of database products, people, and technology.  Fox Software was a perfect fit for them.  To give you a little more context, in 1992 the xBase market was still booming, Access (Cirrus) was still in development, Visual Basic 1.0 had been released and VB 2.0 was in development, and the first release of SQL Server for Windows was not until 1993.

I think if you asked anyone “in the know” at Microsoft, they would tell you that the Fox acquisition was a resounding success (unlike other much more expensive acquisitions that Microsoft has recently dumped).  They got a solid product, key technology that made its way into several other products, and valuable people that went on to take major roles in the company.  Why then did FoxPro not share that level of success?  I do not believe Microsoft had malicious plans to kill FoxPro from the beginning, but the landscape had changed, as it tends to do in technology.  The xBase market declined.

xBase Market Decline

FoxPro was first and foremost a competitor in the xBase market.  As that market declined, so did the value of FoxPro as a strategic product to Microsoft.  What led to the decline of a technology that had been so popular in the 80’s and early 90’s?  Technology trends are constantly changing, but here are few key things that in my opinion diminished the xBase market:

dBASE IV: dBASE IV was a buggy disaster, and it was two years before they released version 1.1.  Borland bought Ashton-Tate, but could not undo the damage.  dBASE for Windows was not released until 1994.  This was good for FoxPro, which became the biggest fish in the xBase pond, but the pond itself began to shrink.

Lawsuit: Ashton-Tate sued Fox Software for cloning dBASE.  The suit was dropped when Borland bought Ashton-Tate, but it could not have inspired confidence in the xBase market.

Client-Server: By the early 90’s, client-server technology picked up in popularity and developers were beginning to flock towards database servers and client-server development tools like PowerBuilder and VB.  At the same time, Microsoft was trying to enter the server market with Windows NT and SQL Server, so I’m sure there was strong emphasis on this style of development from them.  I believe there was talk of a “FoxServer” product at Fox Software, but it never saw the light of day before the Microsoft acquisition.

Those are reasons that the xBase market declined, but about now you’re thinking that VFP is so much more than an xBase tool.  I couldn’t agree more.  VFP can go toe-to-toe with VB, PowerBuilder, Delphi, .NET, and others.  If FoxPro was supposed to “go quietly into the night”, someone forgot to tell the VFP 3.0 team, because they transformed the Fox into a full-fledged OOP development platform ready for the 32-bit world and beyond.  So, why wasn’t the emphasis there from Microsoft? 

An important point to make about Microsoft is that they are a follower of development trends, not a leader.  With a few exceptions (the VB GUI designer comes to mind), Microsoft has not been the one to create a development trend.  “Embrace and extend” was their motto, and they have done well with that.  Windows was Microsoft’s answer to the Mac.  .NET is Microsoft chasing Java into the enterprise.  They follow current trends and they do so mercilessly.  Even now, Microsoft is emphasizing HTML5, leaving Silverlight developers thinking “Wait, I thought we were on the cutting edge?”  It would be out of character for Microsoft to promote and strategize around a product built for a market that was trending downwards.  It’s nothing personal against the Fox, it’s just not in their DNA. 

FoxPro Market Decline

Even with the xBase decline, if FoxPro revenue had continued upward, I wouldn’t be writing this article.  Sales declined, and there are several reasons for that:

Power Users: Going all the way back to dBASE you could question whether it was a platform for power users with development capabilities or a platform for developers that power users could use.  It was both.  Visual FoxPro put it squarely in the developer category, and Access took over as the preferred database for power users.  The result: much fewer licenses sold.

VB, SQL Server, .NET: VFP faced a lot of competition from other products within Microsoft.  With the emphasis always on the latest trends, many developers felt compelled to move to other technologies. 

Visual FoxPro: That’s right, VFP itself.  While VFP 3.0 was a massive improvement in development capabilities (and most of us are happy with that decision), it was also a big leap from FoxPro 2.x in terms of learning curve.  It took some developers quite a while to make the jump, and some never did. 

Not Invented Here Syndrome:  Microsoft took a great product and made it even better, which makes their treatment of FoxPro all the more frustrating.  But Fox was still the stepchild and it was never going to supersede other products developed internally.  By the time Microsoft purchased Fox, they had already made significant investments in VB, Access, and SQL Server.  Those would be Microsoft’s strategic products while Fox would continue serving the declining xBase market and otherwise fit between the lines.

Why 2007?

People had been foretelling the death of FoxPro since Microsoft bought it in 1992.  What made 2007 the year when Microsoft finally decided to cancel it?  Had sales declined to the point that Microsoft could no longer justify Fox development?  Did they want to use the Fox Team in other parts of Microsoft?  Did big customers move to something else?  Were the people that cared gone or no longer in a position to do anything about it?  Your guess is as good as mine.  We will never know. 

There are a couple of ways to look at this: 1) Microsoft always wanted to cancel Fox and they finally got their way, or 2) in spite of Fox not being a strategic product, Microsoft continue to create new versions for Fox developers.  I tend to think of it as the latter.  While there was always a question of Microsoft’s commitment to FoxPro, by the release of VFP 5, it had become clear that it would not be a strategic product.  Per Ken Levy’s blog:

In the initial years after the Fox Software merger, Microsoft put a huge effort and lots of resources into creating VFP 3.0. There were about 50 people on the Fox team with a big marketing budget. In the following years, both Access and VB grew in market share and also competed in ways with the VFP market (and messaging), and by the time VFP 5.0 was released, many upper managers wanted Microsoft to just end VFP there. In fact, they did for a short time. I was there, in a meeting with 40 people, and the formal announcement was made to the Fox team that VFP was dead. It was very early 1996, and that meeting lead to the Gartner Group releasing their report that VFP was dead, which had a major impact on future VFP sales.

Most of Microsoft’s competitors would have ended it right there and VFP 5 would have been the last version.  So, the real question isn’t “Why 2007?”, it’s “Why not 1996?”.  Ken Levy continues:

But the Fox team members along with the community helped convince the developer tools management to keep VFP evolving while decreasing the resources. In fact, the primary reason VFP lasted another decade with 4 more versions released was more about Windows sales than VFP sales. There are many Windows machines running VFP apps. When Steve Ballmer jumps around like monkey boy and yells “developers, developers, developers”, he’s thinking about selling Windows and Office more than sales of developer tools.

If VFP 5 had been the last version, then I may have never had the joy of working with Visual FoxPro, because I really didn’t make the jump from FoxPro 2.x until version 6.0.  In fact, I’m not sure where I’d be today, as I took my current job back in 2000 to upgrade a Fox 2.x app to VFP.  So, I’m definitely thankful Microsoft saw fit to continue development.

That said, Microsoft’s handling of VFP support since the announcement has been appalling.  VFP 9 SP2 introduced several bugs.  After months of begging, we were able to get them to fix one key bug, but others remain that will never be fixed and must be worked around.  Microsoft claims that VFP is supported until 2015, but I’m sorry, that’s not support.  To be clear, I’m not blaming the Fox Team for this.  I’m blaming Microsoft for the fact that there was no Fox Team and management was unwilling to provide resources to fix these problems.  Real support ended when the Fox Team was disbanded and assigned to other projects.

So, what now?  That’s the big question Fox developers are asking themselves or have already answered.  I don’t know about you, but I continue to be extremely busy with Visual FoxPro as my primary development tool.  I also keep tabs on new technologies as they are introduced with an eye towards how they could benefit me.  Maybe that will be the subject of a future post.

Five years in the making (I say that like it’s a good thing), or even longer if you go back to when I first started playing with this concept, FoxTabs has finally reached the coveted “production release” status on VFPX.  Actually, it has been stable for quite some time now, but since FoxTabs works so closely with the internals of VFP, it’s the kind of project you want to let incubate for a while so you can shake out all the bugs.  Causing C5’s in the VFP IDE doesn’t win you any popularity contests!  Many developers have been running it, and the few bug reports I get are pretty obscure, so I feel confident in moving it up to production status.

Download FoxTabs 1.0 now!

I know… I’ve been seriously neglecting my FoxTabs duties… again.  After a long delay, FoxTabs 0.9.2 has just been released.  There have only been a few issues since the last release over a year ago.  Unless new issues are introduced in this version (very possible), I expect this version will become a release candidate, and then version 1.0.

One of the reasons for the delay was an issue discovered by Greg Green, and I wasn’t sure of the best way to handle it.  Greg has created several replacements for the standard VFP editors and designers.  (If you are interested in Greg’s work, go to the Universal Thread Downloads page and enter GKK in the Search field.)  FoxTabs and Greg’s editors were conflicting with each other.  We were eventually led to this statement in the VFP Help for BindEvent():

When binding to Windows message (Win Msg) events, only one hWnd to Windows message pairing can exist.

Greg and I were trying to bind to the same Windows events, but “there can be only one”, so we were stepping on each other’s bindings.  Greg developed a small framework to work around the limitation, and I made some modifications to that for the latest FoxTabs release.

VFP does support multiple bindings for standard FoxPro events.  The solution we came up with adds an object to a collection for each Windows event and binds to that event, effectively translating the Win Msg to a standard Fox event.  BindEvent() is called again to bind the collection object to the intended event handler/delegate. This design allows as many bindings as you want.  The code includes two functions: BindWinEvent() and UnBindWinEvents().

BindWinEvent() has the same interface as the standard BindEvent() function:

BindWinEvent(hWnd | 0, nMessage, oEventHandler, cDelegate [, nFlags])

UnBindEvents() is similar to the standard UnBindEvents() function, but adds a couple of parameters.  Since multiple bindings are now possible, you have to specify which event handler/delegate you want to unbind:

UnBindWinEvents(hWnd | 0, nMessage | 0, oEventHandler, cDelegate)

You can pass 0 to nMessage if you want to unbind all the messages for a hWnd, such as when a window is closed/destroyed.  The following syntax is also supported if you want to unbind all events from an event handler object:

UnBindWinEvents(oEventHandler)

Clear as mud?  The bottom line is that it is recommended you use these functions instead of the standard VFP functions when binding to Windows events.  If everyone does that, then we won’t step on each others toes.  Unfortunately, that is a requirement.  There is nothing we can do to prevent another program from taking over your events with the standard VFP functions.

The code is included in FoxTabs 0.9.2 and is attached.  If you find any problems, please let me know.

Sunday rolled around, and I couldn’t believe it was already the last day of the conference.  Sleep deprivation was starting to set in, and I had more sleep than most.  Still, I wasn’t about to miss any sessions.

VFP and MySQL: Case Study for Remote Data
Rick Schummer

For the purposes of this session, “Remote Data” meant using a database server that resided anywhere, on a local server or out on the internet.  Rick started off with some client/server basics and the various ways you can access remote data from VFP.  It’s common knowledge that SQL Passthrough is the fastest method for accessing remote data, or is it?  Rick showed that in some cases, remote views can actually be faster.  It depends on your scenario, and as VFP has improved, statements about performance that were true in previous versions may no longer be true.  So, you should test performance for yourself, rather than making assumptions based on past results or what you heard from someone else.

Rick then demonstrated connecting to a MySQL server hosted on GoDaddy.com for his site blameitonrick.com.  Even through a slow connection at the conference, performance was quite good.  An upsizing wizard for MySQL is available called Stru2MySQL_2.

Developing and Extending the Visual FoxPro Grid Object
Jody Meyer

Jody is one of the excellent people I met at Southwest Fox this year.  This was Jody’s first time speaking at a Fox conference, and she did a great job.  Her grid class is awesome, or “full of awesome” because nowadays awesome is apparently measured in quantity (get off my lawn!).  Anyway, it’s good.  Not only does is make building grids a snap at development time, but you can give it to your customers to add/remove columns, sort, filter, export, slice, dice, and do pretty much anything you can do with a grid.  No more waiting for the next release to add a column to the grid.  They can do it right now.  Sweet.

Practical Uses for GDIPlusX
Doug Hennig

Being the last regular session of the conference, I was hoping to see some cool stuff to keep me awake.  Doug did not disappoint.  After a brief introduction to GDIPlusX, Doug demonstrated several practical things you can use it for: scaling/rotating images, properly measuring text width/height, creating images from text and adding effects (shadows, etc.), fully justified text in reports, gradients, lightboxes, screenshots, etc.

Closing Session
Tamar Granor, Doug Hennig, Rick Schummer

The closing session is usually brief at Southwest Fox.  There were some giveaways and Southwest Fox 2010 was announced.  One of the slides was titled “Fun, Fun, Fun”, and Doug said this was the funnest conference ever.  For me, that was definitely true, and others have said the same thing.  That is in no small part because the Feltman’s opened their suite to attendees, so special thanks to Mike and Toni for doing that.

The party was by no means over.  The speaker dinner was at room 709, after which attendees started to cycle in.  Since I didn’t have an early flight, I hung out until about 3:00 AM.  Overall, I had a great time this year.  The Fox community is a tight-knit group, but it seems even tighter after this conference.  I can’t wait until next year!

Saturday morning started off with three sessions on architectural/OOP topics, so I was looking forward to it.

Data Driving Applications
Toni M Feltman

Toni is another of my favorite speakers and I love her speaking style. There have been previous sessions about using meta data in frameworks, but this session was more about refactoring legacy code (there’s that subject again) into data. A real-world example she gave was code that ran for specific users. The users were defined by an IF INLIST(“USER1”, “USER2”, etc.) command that was duplicated many times throughout the code. If that sounds ridiculous, perhaps you have seen CASE statements that run custom code for specific clients. The problem is the same: the users/customers are hard-coded into the app. The first thing Toni did was pull the user list into a separate function. This was easy and low risk, and when users changed, they only had to change the list in one place. Later the user list was refactored into a table with the appropriate permissions. Rather than have someone manually add all the users to the table, she did it right in the function and added users automatically with default permissions. The session eventually led to creating memo fields where users could create their own code or expressions without having to touch the main EXE. Another good session.

Getting Your Head Around Business Objects
Tamar E Granor

Business objects are a concept that can be hard to grasp. All too often the technical benefits are highlighted of separating your code into tiers, but what makes it a “business” object? Tamar asserted that the architectural benefit of consolidating your business rules into an appropriate place is more important than the technical benefits. She talked about a fascinating project that used FoxPro to manage network hardware. Since the interface was not tightly bound to data, it forced her to think about how code should be separated into business objects. She then demonstrated the concepts using a Suduko game. There were a lot of objects flying around, but there was a clear separation of concerns and it was interesting to see all the objects interact. Tamar emphasized the idea that business objects are the “engine of your app”.

Advanced Principles of Solid Object Oriented Design
Alan Stevens

This was originally going to be my last session of the conference, but being a “big idea” session, I knew it would be better if I tweaked KOKOPELLI to move it sooner before my brain was completely melted. 🙂 SOLID is an acronym coined by Robert Martin for key OOP design concepts. I won’t go into the details here, but Alan did a good job of driving home the ideas with both metaphors and code.

FoxCharts – Great Looking, Modern Charts in Pure VFP Code
Jim Nelson

All I can say is “Wow!” I had no idea how far along this project had come. Jim demonstrated some impressive charts and functionality, and it is all done in a FoxPro style. FoxCharts is every bit as good as commercial options, if not better.

Excelporting
Christof Wollenhaupt

One of the most popular tools for working with data is Excel, which is ironic considering it is not a database. Nevertheless, our clients demand it and we provide. VFP, of course, has built-in commands that make this a snap, but the result is not exactly presentation quality. COM Automation can be used control the formatting and works pretty well, but it can be very slow. Christof presented another option: XMLSS (XML Spreadsheet), a format introduced in Excel XP (a downloadable plug-in is available for Excel 2000). It allows you control over formatting, but since it is just XML, you get VFP’s text handling speed. There are limitations, but if you can work within them, the result is orders of magnitude faster than automation.

Microsoft Virtual PC for VFP Developers
Doug Hennig

I have heard good things about virtual machines. I’ve never taken the time to try one, so I was ready to see the technology in action. Doug presented Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, which is available for free. As you might guess by the name, it runs an emulated PC inside a window on your desktop. It’s an emulated 32-bit machine with a hard drive, network card, sound card… the basics of what you expect in a typical computer. That being the case, the answer to just about every “How would you do this or that in VPC?” question is “How would you do it on a standard computer?” When you boot up a VM for the first time, you install the OS, service packs, updates, anti-virus software, and any other applications you want.

VM’s are good for testing software, testing installations, and isolating your development environment. Basically, if you don’t want something screwing up your main Windows install, set up a VM and do it there. VPC includes good tools for managing it all. As always, Doug gave an excellent presentation, and now I can really see the value of using virtual machines.

After Hours

Several speakers and attendees went go-cart racing at a local track. I will let the winners gloat over their respective victories. 🙂 Rather than embarrass myself on the track, I headed back to the room to get a little bit of work done and to post on this blog, with the intent of meeting everyone back at Club 709 after the races. By the time 11:00 PM rolled around, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I wimped out and went to bed, but still a good day.

In spite of staying up too late, I woke up well before the alarm went off. That’s a common story at the conference as everyone tries to adjust to the time zone difference.

Open Source Tools
Menachem Bazian

I saw Menachem for the first time last year, and based on that, I knew this session would be both entertaining and informative, a good start to the day. I was not disappointed. The intent was to introduce several tools and overall to recognize how much good free and open source stuff is out there, just waiting for you to try it. We looked at Notepad++, MantisBT (bug tracking), VirtualBox, and others. Menachem has an obvious passion for open source, but he hasn’t abandoned VFP and other Microsoft software out of spite. He commonly connects VFP to MySQL databases. He also was very clear that “free” tools still have a cost in terms of time and resources, and it may still make sense to pay for software that meets your needs. It was a balanced discussion and I enjoyed it.

Enhancing the Visual FoxPro IDE with VFPX Tools
Rick Schummer

I knew this would be a good session. Rick’s passion for VFPx is contagious. This session was focused on VFPx tools for the IDE vs. things you would use in an application. He showed ClassBrowserX, PEM Editor, FoxTabs, Tabbing Navigation, Control Renamer, ProjectHookX, and probably a few others I missed. It is just insane how much Jim Nelson has done with the PEM Editor in a short time. Tamar’s Control Renamer does more than the name suggests, going through the source code and changing references to the old name, in effect becoming a refactoring tool. In case your wondering how it felt to see my contribution (FoxTabs) being featured in front of an audience, the answer is PRETTY DAMN GOOD! Get involved. You won’t regret it.

Top 10 (or more) Reasons to Use the VFP Toolbox
Tamar E Granor

I love Tamar’s teaching style. She has a way of making things so clear and easy to understand. I admit I rarely use the toolbox. I’ve been using the form controls toolbar for so long, it’s hard to break the habit. Besides, the toolbox is just a better controls toolbar made to look like the toolbox in Visual Studio, right? Wrong! There are so many cool features that help avoid all those little extra things you have to do and overall make your life easier, and you can use it right now. If you aren’t using the toolbox, take another look.

Simulating Multithreaded Processes in VFP
Steve Ellenoff

We have a project coming up where a dashboard type interface needs to update itself automatically in the background every few minutes without tying up the rest of the app, so this topic is definitely relevant. Steve showed a couple of different techniques for simulating multi-threaded behavior. The first involves using functionality already built into VFP: AutoYield, DoEvents, Sleep WinAPI, and Timers. These are all things I have used before, but looking at them from a multi-threaded point of view revealed a better understanding of how they work. The second technique uses a separate EXE for running the long process while the main UI is completely responsive. I heard Steve won the award for the longest white paper at 200 pages, so we have plenty of material to help us with the implementation.

Refactoring Legacy Code
Paul Mrozowski

Dealing with legacy code has been a common theme throughout the conference, evidence that both speakers and attendees are having to deal with projects written by someone else. I enjoyed Paul’s approach to the material, not academic at all, but he still got the concepts across. I also appreciated the idea of taking small, low-risk steps to refactor the code, but making steady progress. As with other discussions on refactoring, there was emphasis on testing. Apparently, there is a whole discussion on “Unit Testing” vs. “Integration Testing”. Paul’s response: “I don’t care. Just test it.” My favorite quote of the session.

Bonus Session: VFPX Users Meeting

This session was well attended by both VFPX project managers/coordinators and users. There were several topics, but the main discussion centered around better deployment of VFPX files, and getting the word out to more Fox developers. You can watch the meeting at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/swfoxtv.

Bonus Session: Stonefield Query Users Meeting

Doug Hennig puts together a meeting every year to show off new and upcoming features of Stonefield Query, as well as take requests. As an existing user, I like to go. This is awesome software, and the features coming in version 4.0 are going to make things SO much easier for our customers. If you have been considering a report writer, take a good look at Stonefield Query.

Club 709

The party continued at the Feltman’s for the second night and there were even more people this time. It was good to see YAG there. I met a lot of cool people and had some good discussions.