>"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 ..."
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>Rick: This may be the most profound statement I have ever heard regarding VFP. Why would anyone start with VFP, but at the same time why would I use anything else.

I've seen this many times while on consulting gigs with some largish companies where a small team was using VFP. These small teams were usually fighting political issues with the IT department over use of VFP.

When I would come in, because I was 'high paid consultant' it was one of those occasions when all the different teams would come in together and review the issues and there'd be some code reviews and demonstrations etc.

You could tell from the faces in the non-VFP crowd that many people were downright blown away by what could be accomplished very quickly in VFP when these same folks had already dismissed VFP.

However, even with this sort of a 'live' demonstration you don't see anybody thinking about picking up VFP because of it. VFP is not attractive to most developers, because it is very different. In fact, if you come from a VB or Java or .NET background, VFP just feels all wrong with its arcane language and language inconsistencies. Not a big deael if you've grown up with xBase or if you've picked up VFP a while back but when starting it's a very messy and inconsistent language... Couple that with the 'unknown' factor and you have a really tough sell.