SNIP

>And the same goes for Borland Delphi, by the way. Another almost-starter-then-(thank-God!)-non-starter for me. I remember a bunch of Delphi developers thumbing their nose at VFP developers and acting all-around superior with their all-around superior platform (they thought, and maybe rightly so, except that Delphi has kind of disappeared along with the much ballyhooed -- whatever that means -- Kylix... wait, what am I saying... VFP has kind of disappeared, too, along with Foxpro/Unix and Foxpro/Mac!).
>

There are two different things to consider: business and technology. Delphi disappeared because Borland went south as a business. (Icarus syndrome, trying to fly too close to Microsoft?) Technologically and aesthetically it was a terrific development tool. When I was using it I never looked down my nose at VFP -- unlike lots of corporate developers, I knew better -- but it was very cool to work with. The RAD features of VB combined with the low level capabilities of C.