>Bob, I can't believe what you have said above. Do you really think that big business spend on .NET/SQL because "the business magazine acticles tell them to do so" ??? The company I am currently working for are very shrewd indeed. I am a long standing FOX/VFP developer (since 1989) and I can tell you that the tools I am using right now are totally right for the job and VFP has been usurped because the company have simply outgrown it, and its capabilities. To suggest that they have been "tricked" by business magazine articles is Fox-oriented wishfull thinking on your part.

I think most large companies have different demands than small companies. Small companies want fast, cost effective solutions. Large business's, to varing extents allow politics to drive decisions. The decision makers will usually take the safe road, the current standard being pushed by the big guys(MS/SAP/ORACLE). Thats fine. I am not saying you can't make Great apps in .NET, or JAVA, or Delphi, or whatever. What I am saying is I produce my best work in VFP and have not hit any meaningful limitations that effect my clients. That may change someday, but it hasn't yet.

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>>In this case your skillset is determined/demanded by your employer/customers.
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>Isn't yours? I can work for a VFP customer or a .NET customer or a SQL server customer. I have no axe to grind, irrespective of the tool or platform any customer would require. If the customer had no preference about the technology and just wanted a system that did the job, then I would choose the correct tool for the job. It wouldn't automatically be VFP because the customer didn't have a preference (or a clue).

Not at all, I pick my customers and clients. If they are starting from scratch, I tell them I can give them a great solution in VFP, if they want it done in another language, I try to hook them up with someone that specializes in that language and move on. For existing apps a similar senerio. I chose Fox as my tool of choice about 20 years ago and have made and continue to make a great living just with the fox. In that time I must have been told a dozen times that I needed to move on to this or that hot new language, most of which have already vanished. I don't care too spend my life learning new tools for marginal if any gains. That is what I would get with .Net for MY customers.

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>>We have not found anything we set out to do that we havn't been able to accomplish with VFP.
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>As Fox developers, we look(ed) towards not only MS but talented Fox Gurus to help us find ways to make VFP do things it was never designed to do correctly or efficiently. So, your statement above doesn't surprise me - however, this doesn't mean that forcing a square peg into a round hole makes for the best solution - a solution maybe, but not necessarily the best one.
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You mean like Local Data in .Net? VFP is the round peg for my customers, your customers have different requirements. I rarely have to seek outside help in my solutions because VFP handles the things I do very well.

>>I personally think .Net is still one or two versions away from where I want to invest my time/energy to get involved with it
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>Like the thread originator who invested a whole three months into C# before scurrying back to Fox, it would appear that unless you have spent sufficient time with .NET, you are not really in a position to make the above conclusion. I can tell you for certain, that with .NET 2 / VS2005, there are few cases where I could see any advantage to using VFP, even for the smallest applications. I can say that on the basis of my experience with both tools.

I've looked into enough to understand it's strengths and weaknesses, and the return for me is not worth it. I am not saying that a skilled .Net developer cannot make an app as good or as fast as VFP, but for me there is very little upside.

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>>and I forsee no problem keeping busy and earning a GREAT living using VFP.
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>Kudos to you and power to the Fox - I am sure there are many people making a good living using Fox. It just dried up in these parts many years ago so you either change skills or change occupation.

Again its about jobs, and I agree, if you cannot find Fox jobs in your area or create opportunities to develope new Fox apps, you should move on. I hear the whole european programming scene is greatly political and when the winds shift there it is faster and more deeply rooted.