I would tend to believe that as in many shops that would have been considered VFP shops 5 years ago, they are being trained in other technologies that are more critical to MS.

I'm sure that at a place like MS there are tons and tons of learning opportunities for those that want to take advantage of it. Unfortunately that is the nature of the IT beast. You either have to accept that, or possibly look for another type of employment.

This gets back to the article that was written in the LA Times several years ago about the dark side of IT. The typical developer gets burned out by the age of 40 and moves on to another field. I think the average age of the VFP developer is skewed higher then other tools and there is more resistance to the learning curve that we all face.

>>>The good news never stop for VFP <g>
>>>
>>>Based on the boycott, limited marketing or whatever bad things surrounding VFP I've got one question for you.
>>>
>>>Where do those working on VFP development (I mean within MS) take their motivation?
>>
>>The Visual FoxPro team motivated from shipping a great new version of VFP 9.0, working on enhancing VFP, working on helping add great VFP features to VS and .NET programming, and working with the great VFP community. There are less than 10 people at Microsoft who work on Visual FoxPro at Microsoft, while there are over 1500 people who work on Visual Studio and .NET technologies. I'm not sure why you ask the same basic questions over and over. You generally get the same answer and nothing is ever going to change with regards to this topic.
>
>Excuse me. I guess that our past history misled you. Then again perhaps I did'nt explain myself well enough.
>
>I only want to have a trick or two over this question. No doubt in my mind that VFP9 is a fantastic product amd enhancement of it can also be a great motivation. But it's not enough.
>
>If I take for example what I learned in school. And more precisely the "Maslow Pyramid". http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/maslow_pyramid.html
>
>To me the "Belonging needs" and "Esteem needs" are probably not fulfilled.
>
>I mean the "Belonging need" can't be fulfilled when the THING (VFP) they're working on has no recognition whatsoever and even those working for the same company probably don't know that it still exists.
>
>And what about the "Esteem need". VFP is clearly going in a dead-end direction. Even if something fantastic is added to VFP in the future it won't
>make as much noise as even an insignificant addition to .Net
>
>So to retain someone as good as Calvin Hsia withing that team is quite a feat.
>
>So what's the secret for motivating those guys and keeping them?
>
>This is not a trick question. I only hope to get information that could be usefull to me eventually. That's all.
>
>Thanks in advance.