>That's easy - many organizations follow Microsoft today as they once did for IBM. Let's say Microsoft pushed VFP instead of .NET. You can bet a lot of shops would be jumping all over themselves trying to implement VFP. In other words, it's less for the technical merits, in a lot of cases, and more because it's the latest and greatest from MS. Some developers like you get caught up in this and have to go whichever way the wind is blowing. I'm sure there are some areas where .NET would have the edge in technology simply because of the amount of resources they're putting behind it. However, I don't think, at this point, it would justify jumping ship purely on technical merits. This is classic Microsoft marketing strategy at work with a healthy dosage of FUD in the mix...
Microsoft marketing aside it's up to developers to make decisions on how htey want to work.
I can tell you from experience that you will not get a VB6 developer to use VFP except in very rare circumstances even when demonstrating how much more productive you can be with VFP than VB6. A lot of people were touting back that when .NET came out that .NET is going to open the floodgates and bring VB developers to VFP because VFP is still an unmanaged platform. Not only has that not happened but a very large chunk of VB developers have gone on to VB.NET. Certainly not all and those left behind are very vocal - kinda similar to this group here... VFP is a great product but one that doesn't sell well to developers, and not only because of Microsoft's marketing or lack thereof, but because it's very different from anything else out there. New developers who have never been exposed to xBase are not going to find VFP attractive for the same reason that many VFP developers do not find .NET attractive because they would loose features that they are so familiar with.
I have no argument with Microsoft's marketing practices sucking. From the early hype that they can't live up to, to the delays of new products that underdeliver to the musceling in to keep momentum going etc. But at teh same time you have to also acknowledge what does get delivered in the end.
I was thinking about this statement somebody made earlier - 'I was amazed that this stuff wasn't in the ASP.NET 1.0 and they are putting it in only now in 2.0'. Very typical - show me one tool that compares to ASP.NET 1.1 today in feature breadth and architectual excellence... There are many adequate tools, but there's nothing that comes even close to the same reach and all inclusiveness of ASP.NET. There are many things that could use improvement but have you looked at the alternatives?
