Is it just me, or are you editing your posts as the day goes on? Too much free time.

I absolutely agree with how you judge developers to have enough intelligence to make sound decisions on tool choices.

Question? I don't know if you feel the same way, but I give developers a high score on analysis skills. So they are able to analyze problems well to come up with satisfactory solutions for their client base.

With this in mind, why has the user base for VFP undergone a massive decline in the last 10 years or so?

I remember reading an editorial, in Foxpro Advisor I think, many years ago where the author discussed how he felt that the cause for DBase and Foxbase sales were caused by a small percentage of the actual user base. That if you looked at the user base as a pyramid, with the smallest number at the point being developers, and the largest number of users at the bottom being the clients of apps written in Dbase/Foxbase, it was a top down effect. \

Developers would go to their user base and say I can write the best app for you using Dbase. He was complaining about marketing campaigns that targeted the user base. So the return for the marketing campaigns would be low since they were not targeting the real decision makers.







>>>I also would have to assume, based on your comment that you don't do UI, that we are not even debating on the same plane.
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>I think you're referring to a discussion I held with somebody else with whom I agreed that perceived "best practice" depends on the task at hand. I wasn't aware of any debate.
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>>>Personally, I think it's their marketing machinery at work. It's folks looking at dotnet vs. java and looking for technologies found at MS that could be added to dotnet to create a larger gap between the two.
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>But who would be the target of such a cynical marketing exercise? MS knows very well that the sorts of developers it is trying to attract are not the ones who respond to sound-bites.
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>In the case of LINQ, there seems to be a consensus developing around here that it is a good start and I'm confident MS will continue to add value to dotNET until it becomes a "no-brainer" for people using tools like VFP.