>>By that time, most of the experienced, decent VFP developers will have migrated to other platforms, just like most of the Big VFP names of 5 years ago are gone. Then rates will decrease because the only people left are the newbies with nothing to offer or programmers with deprecated skill sets and no options.

This presumes much

I remember reading an interview with Bill Gates in USA today on about June 30th 2003. In that article he said essentially any one waiting for type of market that existed for independent developers that existed in the 1990's that was holding his breath would most likely die of asphyxiation.

Further it isn't consistent with past trends. The following is.

>>"Meanwhile those who cleverly learned a commodity development tool are watching in dismay as their jobs are systematically outsourced to the 3rd world. Any remaining local jobs have low pay rates because employers threaten to give the work to a Masters Graduate in Mumbai, or to one of the other desperate local developers with bills to pay and nothing else to offer. Competing for the few VFP jobs suddenly becomes more attractive than competing in an oversupplied commodity market."

This is more like it

If you would have taken a beginning level course in Organizational Theory you'd know that there is a tendency for organizations to try to de-skill any work function where the labor is relatively scare.

If you have payed attention to Microsoft over the years and you were aware of the MBA corriculum, you'd be amazed at how well schooled the company is in them.

Microsft has every interest in deskilling programming because they want everyone to be able to use and buy their programming tools.

To merely know a tool probably won't be worth much in the near future. If one is going to have any value it will be to solve some problem where the tool is merely incidental part of what you are doing.

In my case, I use FoxPro extensively, and for the issues I deal with it is definately the best tool available. But that is merely incidental.

My employer doesn't care, just deliver the goods.