I understand what you are saying (and pretty much about whom you are saying it <s>) but I'm not just talking about the search for guruhood. That's a fool's errand if you think about it. In the world outside of VFP nobody knew (knows) who any of our gurus were (are). Making a name in a bigger pond is not exactly a smooth path to success. But of those people whom I know personally I see a lot more of a genuine curiosity about new possibilities - in some cases leading to career choices I personally thought were premature or at least would have been for me given what I had going on in VFP. I think there really is excitement about getting to play with new toys and becoming part of a world (again) where the developer community is growing very rapidly and the critical mass of thinking about the technology is building. This is surely not unique to .NET, but I don't think it is happening at this stage of VFPs life and a lot of people really miss that.

I also see long established and successful Fox people who are behaving very differently from when I knew them in the early days of Foxpro when (I thought) intellectual curiosity and excitement about being part of the beginning of something that was evolving spurred them on to see what was possible. Together we invented a way of looking at programming and a community of programmers.

A lot of those people have moved on to other things - but for a lot of the same reasons we had when we started out together. Some who are well established now are digging in their heels and being very resistant to losing their following to a competing ideology.

I don't need to work for anybody else I could ride out VFP for another ten years making all the money I need, but the part that would be missing would be the rush of the new - new people, new ideas, new problems, new solutions. I don't think that element can be discounted in looking at the future of a technology and the people it attracts - or frightens.

And I'm finding (as I'm sure you have) that *all* the good developers haven't been doing VFP for the last 10 years and some have actually been evolving approaches to other technologies that reflect a lot of innovation and have developed communities of mutual support and intellectual synergy.

And maybe some of it has to do with being an old guy on his fifth or sixth career. One thing I've learned it that it is very good for me study things about which I know nothing and actively seek to put myself in environments where I know less than the people around me and I have every reason to believe I'm not the smartest guy in the room. (or maybe I just like to do that because subjects and situations like that are still so easy for me to find <bg> )




>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.
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>Sure. Some of these people have made a career out of being a guru. The easiest way to become a guru in IT is to get in early, giving enthusiastic presentations and writing books at a time when most of the market is ignorant.
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>It's worth comparing to the process of becoming a guru in (say) medicine or law. If you're a physician who seizes a new product and promotes/parrots enthusiastically before there is any real-world proof as to its efficacy, you are more likely to be regarded as a dangerous crank rather than as an expert. You risk being struck off. Whereas in IT you're likely to be given a prestigious award from the vendor and opportunities to promote yourself as an expert. On this basis, it's easy to rationalize enthusiasm about new IT trends- e.g. NET in previous iterations when it was frankly awful at things like data manipulation. I agree that NET is a lot better at data stuff these days but if you go back and review some of the claims made since 2001... sheesh.
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>Also I agree that VFP can't be expected to return to its glory days. However, the latest trend (Cloud/SaaS) de-emphasizes technology, meaning that niche players who want to keep using VFP or cobol or VB6 or Lisp or whatever, aren't going to be penalized by the market. But various experts still seem convinced that the market is fascinated by choice of technology and will penalize practitioners who don't gallop with the herd. As usual, the truth probably lies somewhere in between. Certainly those who gallop with the herd will want to criticize alternative choices made by competitors.
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>Then there's a lot of valid gloom about the lack of new blood in VFP. This matters a great deal. However, in 2008 the question has to be "how much truly new development should we expect and of that, how much requires highly specialized niche expertize against which learning a 4GL is as nothing." IMHO the latest trends mean that more and more development will be commodity with an API to allow overlays that deliver niche business advantage. IMHO many people who make a living cutting code have already figured this out and are looking at ways to position themselves safely for whatever future period makes sense to them. For some of them, this means being able to add "NET" to their CV. For others it means being able to add "Speedway racing systems" or "Project Planning" or "Database Admin."