Hiya Craig ---

OK, I'll bite :)

I completely agree with points (and facts) 1,2,3, and 4. I don't agree with 5...it's been a LONG time since I was hired to maintain a TurboPascal program...Fox apps would just get flat out replaced. I see it happening in my organization.

>1. It wasn’t that long ago that Microsoft committed to the survival of the Macintosh in two ways: continuing Office for the Mac and a $100,000,000 cash infusion. Why did Microsoft do this? For 300,000 Mac users. Some say that it was just a ploy by Microsoft to keep a competitior alive. It doesn’t matter. It was still a significant investment.
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>2. According to Microsoft there are 500,000 of us. Note that number is lots bigger than the Mac numbers.
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>3. When I was in college 15 years ago, I heard “COBOL is dead” Guess what, COBOL is still here. 15 years later.
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>4. The rumors of FoxPro’s death have been circulating since Microsoft and Fox merged. Fox is still here, and IMO, is better than ever.
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>5. So, what happens if Microsoft does kill of Fox? We, as knowledgeable Fox developers will be in great shape. Why? No one will learn Fox and someone will have to maintain those millions of lines of code. Yes, some will be rewritten, but most of it will be maintained. (Refer to point #3)
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>6. If Fox is killed off, we will learn something new. It doesn’t matter if it is VB, Delphi, PowerBuilder, Java or something else. Rather than wait, we should all be advancing and learning something else now. I’ve expressed my opinion that VB is the way to go, but it is just that…my opinion. By learning other tools, clients will be impressed that you are keeping up with technology. This will especially help those that deal with large corporations. You can sell them on the best solution, rather than a VFP solution. If you don’t think this works, talk to people like Jim Booth and John Petersen.
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Well...no kidding...we would HAVE to learn something else or start selling cars ;-)

Really, you make a good point: Developers sell solutions NOT VFP or VB programs. Oddly enough, I seem to run into this tool-centric attitude a helluva lot more in VB people than in VFP people.

>7. At this time there is not a VFP exam for the MCSD. There is also not an exam for Visual J++ or Visual Interdev. I’m sure those people feel the same way we do. Instead of griping about it here, send email to mcp@msprograms.com. But then, follow up by getting certified. That’s really what will be looked at. The number of certified people.
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How can we get certified if our core skills are not part of the core track??? Isn't this like the chicken and the egg dilemma?

>8. There has been much griping about features we wish were in VFP. The biggest thing I see here is some type of security. To really make this work would require a complete change in the DBF. The data would need to be encrypted. Keep in mind that the data would then have to be decrypted. This would slow down data access. Then prople would scream about that. So, we come back to what I’ve said before: If you need SQL Server, use it. If not, VFP has a great data engine. The fact is, the best way to ensure VFPs survival is for it to adopt the technologies that Microsoft is touting and playing nice with other Visual Studio tools.
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1000% in agreement....

>9. About 10% of Visual Studio users are using VFP. This number is bigger than Microsoft expected. This will ultimately help VFP.
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Really? Craig, it's not that I don't not believe you but I'd *love* to see where that came from....that really IS good news. There are some technical managers at my consulting firm that I could bash over the head with a reputable source of THAT information :)

>10. VB developers were wowed at TechEd regarding the capabilities of VFP. Some of them will use it. Again, adding to our numbers.
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Yeah, it's amazing how many VB programmers I've shown VFP too whose jaws fell open...again, isn't it odd that VFP people know far more about VB than the reverse?