>Hi Gang,

Hi John,

From what I've read in UT, things here are much the same as everywhere else as far as VFP is concerned.

Companies are almost embarrassed to consider FoxPro when the subject comes up - is it still being sold? who ownes it now? yea I remember that, great language in it's day, pity it went down the gurgler.

FoxPro was one of the most used languages in the country pre-1990ish. I remember the day it happened, I was working for Telecom at the time, 12,000 odd computers, huge WAN tying up hundreds of LANs and FoxPro 2.6 was being used extensively, VFP3 just released but not yet hit our shores.

Then the "Post" was made and copied into the newsgroups from Microsoft stating the FoxPro programming team would be disbanded after the next version of FoxPro (deny it as much as you like, but I saw the post). The effect was incredable, FoxPro was dropped like a hot brick. Since that time, FoxPro has never recovered here. Even I dropped it, only comming back to it last year with VFP 5 and discovered a pleasant surprise.

So much for history, now on to my point.

MS did a lot of damage with the marketing of FoxPro. Take a tip from Borland. Something very similar happened with Turbo Pascal in that it came out of favour. Then Borland released Delphi and begun a very agressive marketing campaign combined with sales offices intent on getting a copy in through the corporate door. They realised that once they could open their minds and see the product, they would like what they saw.

But they had a problem. The argument always came up from others who were pushing their own favourite language that "wasn't Borland going under?" "No-ones using Delphi" and other rumours. Still Borland pushed on. Now it's being used as a serious development tool that is a serious contender in most corporations and businesses here.

MS needs to do the same with VFP. I almost scream in my organisation knowing that I can show them a tool that'll deliver apps with a throughput undreamed of, that screams with it's blindingly fast data manipulation and will deliver all the new fangled things that they want without having to pay a royalty for each user. But I'm now in serious likelyhood of being thought of as somewhat of a nutter (what's new) for trying to push a dead language that isn't even being supported by the people what sell it.

My point is: VFP will die. Without new users it will die. Without marketing and visible support from Microsoft it will die. Microsoft has no way to get new users if it only markets to current users of FoxPro. For a company to take on a new language, they need to know that the language will be around in a few years time and continually advancing; that there will always be buckets of programming resources out there when they need a contractor or new programmer; and that the person who makes the purchasing decision isn't going to be laughed at by his peers.

Stev