When I was at TechEd last month, I was tipped off about a Microsoft project called KittyHawk that would resurrect FoxPro technology as a RAD tool for .NET. I found a partner that was familiar with the project, but wasn't able to squeeze out any details that were worth writing about. Microsoft clammed up when I fished for more information, so it fell onto my backburner.
That is until today, when my friend Mary Jo Foley landed the scoop, and blogged about some of the details that she has learned.
According to the blog post, KittyHawk is an attempt to broaden .NET development to novice programmers to write business applications. It brings a FoxPro/Access style of programming to .NET, and will employ a visual designer with templates and a drag-and-drop interface. The KittyHawk tool will generate XAML.
One of the biggest complaints that I hear about .NET is that it is a moving target. Developers who are still trying to catch up with frameworks introduced in .NET 3.0 now see things changing again in .NET 4.0 and beyond.
What's more, many FoxPro developers still want to write FoxPro applications, and the FoxPro community is still thriving. It makes sense for Microsoft to tap into that pool of developers, and to lower the barrier to entry to .NET programming. Microsoft needs to do just that, because it's competitors are already doing it.
Spring is making Java programming easier to do, Salesforce prides itself on making service creation possible for non-programmers, and there is now an Android mobile app generator. Microsoft found success with VB and FoxPro, and really doesn't have any equivilent technology anymore. It's about time that Microsoft made .NET more accessible.