I agree with you 100%. If I were to start a new project today I would not use VFP tables. SQL express is the way to go. We haven't started new projects with dbfs since 1995. All SQL Server, Cache or Oracle. But that's not an argument against dbfs: it's a reality dictated by large amounts of data needed by multiple people with decent security and reliability.
Not everybody has those needs.
As for SQL Express: both of us can recite the advantages that might cause people to move that way. Both of us can also recite the maintenance, implementation and hardware issues that go along with that decision. Customers can and will weigh these things up.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
