>Given its current state, is it possible for the VFP language and the VFP community to rise from the ashes and become the powerful tool and vibrant community that it once was?

As far as being a path to employment and large demand - I don't think there is a chance of it. Not because brilliant people aren't going to continue to use it and improve it, but because of issues of critical mass and the nature of software development and developers.

As others have said, it will continue to be able to do what it does. But software development moves on, requirements move on, and developer interest and excitement moves on.

Many of the VFP developers who have to some degree or another become excited about .NET are exactly those who had the most success with Foxpro, had the most to gain from VFP becoming a flagship product and were the first to push VFP to its limits. I'm surprised more people haven't really asked themselves why that is.

Perhaps the same things that made them excited about and successful with foxpro are the very reasons they have become excited about another tool which is in a different phase of its lifecycle.

Personally, I got into software because it was so much fun to learn so much new stuff and be around very smart people. I mentioned to my wife the other day that while I love doing client work in VFP/VFE because I can produce so much so quickly (and make so much money at it), when I goof around with .net (where I am still a beginner and have yet to make a dime) I have that rush I got earlier in foxpro when I could double my knowledge in a day, rather than increment it by a small percentage point over a year. That's fun and it keeps me interested. I just feel very fortunate to be able to make a good living with VFP/VFE with the primary challenge being business analysis and efficiently delivering on client needs, while getting my "Hey, that is really cool" fix every day in VB .NET/Strataframe learning stuff that I have no doubt will translate to economic viability for as long as I care to work.

As far as handling data goes - man, I love creating remote view based apps against SQL in VFE but now having seen data handled right in .NET (not as opposed to VFP but as opposed to how I thought it was handled in .net)I'm also excited about the possibilities with asynchronous data sets and some of the .net approaches to interacting with data stores. N-tier development in .NET is not conceptually that different from n-tier development in vfp/vfe.

And as to community - this community has changed dramatically since the foxgang CIS days and I've seen a lot of very nice folks with exactly the right kind of spirit in the Strataframe community (and I'm sure there are equivalent sets growing up elsewhere) Community is what you make it. It is tool agnostic.

VFP will be around a long time and the friendships we've made wil be around even longer. But excitement is something different and people will change their focus (or keep it in the same place) according to their own personalities and purposes.