--- much SNIPPED
>, but its marginalisation is pretty clear now and the business prompts to examine other tools are fairly obvious.
>
>That's why VFP people should take at least a passing interest in Java. When you see how fast VJ++ has gained the features VB has and has bypassed VFP in proper participation in VS, you have to ask what is so special about VJ++ that allows it to do that when VFP apparently can't. "Whatever" that reason is,
>and we probably agree about what it is, it is pretty important and not to be ignored IMHO.
>
>Regards
>
>JR

John,

I've always been game to look over any new "tool" that comes along, and sometimes I even adopt them as my own.
But never never never has one such chosen tool been DELIBERATELY marginalized. That MS is big enough to pull this off makes me cheer quietly on the sidelines for the DoJ investigation currently underway in the States.
That the VFP community (if we can even call it that any more) simply sits by and lets this happen is even more astounding to me. But it is *real*, as we have seen since DEVCON.

There is something terribly wrong with our business when a tool that could do it all, and economically too, is starved in favour of slower, more complicated, far more expensive "solutions".
It may be five years or fifteen years, but some day some bright light is going to come along with the great idea that zillions of independent pieces are way too hard to manage and control and that what is really needed is a product which has everything in one box. But I guess we have to go through the agony before we can reach that conclusion. The idea that MS is big enough to let us try out BOTH methods at the same time to see which wins just doesn't seem to be in the cards.

Regards

Jim N