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Microsoft to Open Source FoxPro
rah1420 writes "Microsoft has announced that it will open-source the core portions of the Visual FoxPro DBMS software to its CodePlex community development site. At the same time, Microsoft has announced that it will no longer be making new versions of the FoxPro DBMS."
I'm normally a stickler for grammar but verbing is a pretty widely accepted practice in colloquial English.
I'm normally a stickler for grammar but verbing is a pretty widely accepted practice in colloquial English.
Doubleplus insightful!
It's too hard to construct a meaningful phrase when a single word will do, and with so many words in the English language, who has time to learn them all and pick a better alternative? And for for those naysayers and pedants who say this is a recent practice that is accelerating along with rudeness, poor spelling, decreased attention span and comprehension, I say get with the program, buster! If you want to be a team player, then you know that general illiteracy is inevitable. You'll be happier when you stop trying so hard. Language evolves. Everyone knows that. It's your right to make up words use them as you see fit. Don't let those antiquated notions of correctness like grammar, spelling, punctuation, style or coherence get in the way.
A nearly amusing attempt at mocking satire, but it's based on a flawed premise. If you look at the Wikipedia page I provided, you'll see that it's anything but a recent practice. That page cites many instances (including, I might point out, one example from "Hamlet," hardly an incoherent piece of writing!)
It's not even particularly clear to me that it's accelerating. It might look that way but I think it's equally likely that the nouns that were widely verbed in the past are now accepted as pure verbs, so we don't consider them examples of verbing any more. A few examples: "gas," "stock," "mail," and "fuel." Look up the etymology of each of those and you'll see they all started out as nouns. Look them up in the stodgiest modern dictionary you can find and you'll see they are all accepted as verbs now.
I don't believe there's really any good way to measure the amount of verbing that happened in the past, and without that measurement, how can one make any assertion about the practice becoming more frequent? (If you have a reference to any hard numbers, e.g. from historical surveys of literature, that indicate verbing has become more common over time, please prove me wrong.)
Mastery of English (or any other language) means wisely using all the linguistic tools at one's disposal. Verbing is one of them. Like any tool, it can be used well or poorly. But even used poorly, it is not at all the same thing as ignoring well-established rules of grammar, punctuation, or spelling; it is, rather, part of the well-established rules of English grammar.
Well...I doubt that would be a problem in today's world. With great open source databases like postgresql, or for something small and fast, even mysql...why would you even bother to go with the old FoxPro stuff from MS?
I mean...back in its day...it was GREAT!! I cut my first database baby teeth with it for medical research projects. There was nothing else remotely like it for the PC.
But, we've come so far from the early 90's....
Didn't MS just buy FoxPro, to steal the 'jet' engine from it to stick into access (and please don't call THAT a database...what an abomination)? I think they did that, and just pretty much let FP rot after that without a lot of push forward....so, why bother using it when superior open source databases are already out there for the taking...?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........