>...However, like FPD/FPW/VFP I suspect there will be a natural and hopefully rapid progression of language/IDE which will allow me and others to quote prices to our clients equivalent to those we quoted in VFP.

Each version of Visual Studio has brought improvements for productivity, such as ObjectDataSource for two-way data binding to business object classes and the ability to navigate Server Explorer, point at a table and drag/drop onto a form to populate it with controls.

I expect that each version will continue to add features that enhance productivity -- once you lose enough time/productivity trying to learn it all. :-)