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Comment by mwattsun | Hacker News Reader

This article about how Microsoft Access won't die got me thinking about creating an open source alternative. I just retired and am looking for a project. I also have a history with msft that might be helpful.

https://medium.com/young-coder/microsoft-access-the-zombie-d...

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This is my pet peeve. I'm already working in a relational language (http://tablam.org) to use as the core.

My dream is to have not only an Access/Excel(in the role of pseudo-table programming) alternative, but one that could work great in a iPad/mobile device.

Also, in this space, most "options" are fully on the cloud.

Thats cool, but will never be a real challenger to Access or Excel if depend on cloud 100%. I need it to work fully standalone.

My first programming language was FoxPro. I know what it look like to "live the dream". One single language and environment and you TRULY code ALL the app: Db, logic, forms, reports, web services, etc.

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BTW: why start with a relational lang? The MAIN power of the dbase/fox family above access was to have a truly tailored language for the task. With office, you MUST work from a paradigm (Access:Relational, Excel:Reactive functional) and become an inferior procedural maybe OO developer (VBA) to finish stuff. The dissonance is heavy.

I interviewed with a quant hedge fund in 2004 whose systems where all in FoxPro. They loved it. The general partner of the fund believed that Microsoft had figured out that they could unbundle FoxPro into 3+ components (DB, IDE, Reports...) and sell each separately. It's been a mystery to me why no one, using sqlite as the DB foundation, has attempted a modern-day FoxPro\MsAccess-like tool.

Using sqlite will be good. This is part of my plan (to build on top of sqlite (better) or lmdb (crazy!). Honestly sqlite, not kid ourselves).

P.D: I think for a company like MS FoxPro was not a good business, but it could be very good for a smaller player. Fox have a decent market and was very loved by the community.

Be very careful if you are going to invent your own programming language. The Eve creators had similar noble goals and ended up burning VC money and achieving nothing.

This my hobby and at worst, will be the only one to use the lang. I'm well aware of the complications of the endeavor. I procrastinate in start this for more than 10 years!, because I tell myself: This is not for me, and somebody else must do something better.

I wish to have some funding but my need are modest, so if i cover my own expenses so i can focus at least half time is good enough...

Or you could help fix up Libreoffice Base which badly needs some love

Can someone explain what's going on with that project?

There is a LGPL library that I am familiar with that handles it https://jackcess.sourceforge.io

I have a very bare bones Android app which uses the library https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.unwrappeda...

Incidentally my Android app is based off my free software Android project https://github.com/dennis-sheil/android-spreadsheet

Yes! scrolled all the way down for this. In the non-tech world, a GUI/form builder + relational database that was extendible through a decent scripting language all in one package would be huge.

If there's a real, useful OSS alternative to Access then let me know. Otherwise you might be onto something!

Maybe the new "open" Microsoft will put it up on GitHub. Probably not though. I imagine the code base is a mess at this point

Im working on exactly that. Check out ResponseVault.com.

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