Worth the perception?

Absolutely. I am tired of answering the question about VFP being dead. But I have a more practical interest. I know just enough about C# to know that a higher level implementation could lead to faster development. Sprinkle in a few data centric commands and some easy ways to check for data set state changes (e.g. dirty buffers) and I think we would be good to go.

The GUI interface stuff and the display of PEMS in C# is pretty good "as is". So we give up the Report Writer, which frankly I would miss. We give up VFP databases. As much as I like VFP tables, it would be better to have a single file database.

This last may be the main issue for a lot of developers. It takes a lot more time to work with SQL than it does with Fox tables. The installation and setup at the customer's site is always a pain, and there is the licensing cost. SQLExpress, in spite of it's promise of portability, has been a PITA for me. It also has limitations. Worse, Microsoft has nothing better to offer (that is, free to the end user).

VistaDB, so far, seems to be a dream. Single file database, portable and small footprint, inexpensive, no royalties on distribution, optimized for .Net, a easy to work with. It would make most VFP developers happy.

Which lead me back to why I think that a new Fox, built by a modern day Dave Fulton, could be product that would make money. Is there currently any other language that is data centric and offers fast development? Not really. Iron python, maybe, someday. A handful of other open source languages.

Which now leads to another thought. Open sourcing is not the way to go. It is development by committee. No open source project has really become commercially viable or has captured a significant market share. I think that most of the really good languages, the ones that programmers like, were all developed by small companies that were VERY focused.

Put another way.. if you were a brand new programmer and could choose for yourself what to work with, you practical choice today is only C#. (you could argue for VB, but my opinion is that it has a short life). For this reason, I think that there is a market for an alternative language. Remember, when Fulton started Fox Technologies, there was a lot of folks who thought that there was not a market for a product to compete with Ashton Tate's dBase.

Keep thinking happy thoughts. If enough of us keep talking, maybe we can one day have a 21st century Fox.

Regards
Don Lowrey