>I've been reading this new book called "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates". The book is from the point of view of the original Windows programmer. A sentence in it struck me about "Chairman Bill's" thinking:
>
>pg 15.
>"Gates wanted all of the languages to be the same-BASIC. After all Gates had written it. But despite Chairman Bill's monument to code, the computer world needed to move on."
>
>Also nowhere in this books is the purchase of Foxpro mentioned but VB is only mentioned twice.
>
>Here are some of my opinion points:
>
>1) VFP is not a strategic product for Chairman Bill (see above paragraph).
>2) If he dumps VFP there is some competititor who will take up the "cause".
>3) Maybe us oldtimers will live out our careers with VFP but I am training newtimers to use VFP and they see the benefits when compared to other development environments.
>4) I believe people are looking for alternatives. (Look at the Linux market for example).
>5) I have been battling this FP thing for years with clients. The winning strategy is to make your clients/employers have faith in you (not VFP or VB).
>
>Costas


You have to keep in mind that Bill *IS* BASIC. His history is creating BASIC for different machines. That's the reason IBM first approached him when then introduced the PC. Using your logic, VC++ isn't important either.