GJgjvc·Oct 6, 2025
In [dead]harbour
core
C2016–2025
harbour / core
core
Portable, xBase compatible programming language and environment
8Distinct people
8Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
421GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Portable, xBase compatible programming language and environment
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
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Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:03:16 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year8 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2016-02-08 15:36:35 UTC to 2025-10-06 17:09:35 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
8 sourcesI learned to program on various dBase languages. That Clipper 5 preprocessor was quite the thing! It reminds me of https://research.swtch.com/shmacro but it met a real need, lowering a COBOL-like syntax to a C/Pascal-like one.
(dBase code looks like https://github.com/harbour/core/blob/master/tests/ntx.prg , and https://github.com/harbour/core/blob/master/include/std.ch is an open-source reimplementation of Clipper's preprocessor definitions).
In Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)Harbour/core: Portable, xBase compatible programming language and environment
2 points · Open discussionI understand what you say but FPC and Harbour just show that writing portable c code is actually possible...
https://github.com/harbour/core#supported-platforms-and-c-co...
In PureBasic switches to a C backendQuick shoutout to xHarbour and Harbour - the open-source, commercially-supported versions of Clipper. https://github.com/harbour/core
The projects are still going strong and many years ago I had ported a huge Clipper project into Harbour and had it working well across a 20 node network with both Clipper and Harbour binaries working simultaneously on the same database.
These days every time I make another web application I wish for the simplicity of xBase. But there is some core truth about application development hidden there that is lost to me now.
In Microsoft's FoxPro 2.5 Is Fast and Easy to Use (1993)If you come from the dBase / Clipper experience, then Harbour could be considered a more modern version => https://github.com/harbour/core
In Microsoft Access: The Database Software That Won't DieHarbour: an xBase compatible compiler
2 points · Open discussionAll right, this is all I needed to know cited from that page:
"XBase [...] is a general term for languages and tools derived from the Ashton Tate dBASE product, popular in the 1980s and early 1990s. Clones include FoxPro, Quicksilver, dbXL, and a compiled dialect called Clipper (which spawned XbasePlusPlus, FlagShip, and Harbour)."
"XBase originated as a table-oriented non-SQL language and tool vaguely influenced by relational theory and (mainly) cursor-oriented table navigation techniques from the 1960s. It was one of the first products that easily allowed small businesses access to database concepts such as ad-hoc queries, indexing, and data-driven CrudScreen RAD when microcomputers were just coming of age. [...]"
"It allegedly has its roots in a legacy database product called RETRIEVE. The Pasadena Jet Propulsion Laboratory, famous for
Read the rest
planetary probes, didn't want to pay licensing fees for RETRIEVE and so set out to create something similar. In a round-about way, it eventually wound up a commercial product for CPM microcomputers, and grew quite popular in the DOS world."
There is an open source implementation at http://harbour-project.org/ (-> http://harbour.github.io/ ) whose latest version 3.0.0 was released on 2011-07-17, but the Github repo (imported from SourceForge) shows recent activity: https://github.com/harbour/core