The Grumpy Editor's next project [LWN.net]

The Grumpy Editor's next project

Posted May 10, 2007 3:35 UTC (Thu) by paulmfoster (subscriber, #17313)
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's next project

I used to work for a company which sold a (DOS/Windows) accounting package called SBT, written in FoxPro. One of the reasons we could remain in business was that no off the shelf accounting package seems to fit the needs of any given business. Hence, most of our money was made modifying SBT to fit customer businesses. I left that company ten years ago, and built my own accounting system under FoxPro for use in my company (we do newsletters and websites). Recently, I've rewritten the whole thing in PHP, using PostgreSQL as the database. FWIW, as a former C programmer, this conversion took me about six months (PHP is a *lot* like C).

In any case, good luck. I have a feeling this search is going to make you even grumpier.

Here's another thought though-- what if you were to post the specs for the system you want, and then give up to five people lifetime subscriptions for delivering a product to your specs? Just a thought.

(Log in to post comments)

Developing for LWN use

Posted May 10, 2007 5:04 UTC (Thu) by pjm (subscriber, #2080) [Link]

what if you were to post the specs for the system you want, and then give up to five people lifetime subscriptions for delivering a product to your specs?

Even so, it's good to start with a look at existing software, which (I suppose) is useful to other people considering adopting or switching to such software. The resultant reviews will likely focus on the features most important to our Grumpy Editor, so each review can largely be seen as a sort of informal specification as a diff against existing functionality.