Yeah, Mike, I remember. But VFP3 was 5 1/2 years before the decision was made to drop out of VS and even before VFP was part of VS.

Seems to me that those who saw VFP being dropped out of VS as a sign were not really VFP developers but generalists as I recall that the long-time VFP developers who were not really into any other platform seemed to largely support the disconnect.

Honestly, being exposed extensively to both platforms for several years, I don't see how VFP would have made it in .Net 1.0 without a hysterical outcry (deservedly so) from the community about the loss and limitation to functionality. I don't see how we would have retained our DML without an elaborate new namespace; we would have required the framework for distribution; we would have completely lost backward compatibility as I doubt the resources would have been proffered to write conversion wizards.

I guess it's hard to see that the monsoon will be good for the crops when you're drowning in the rain but I really think that .Net is evolving into a platform that will be palatable for data-oriented VFP developers. I also believe that VFP apps still have an unbeatable role in a lot of environments, just to be clear.

It's a shame to me that now that .Net is expanding to be more data friendly and has mort smarts that the experience and resources no longer exist at MS to readdress this issue. I can really see a VFP using framework 3.5 in VS as long as backward compatibility was not an issue. But....it ain't gonna happen. New stuff like F-Sharp gets all the "new" language attention.

Maybe we'll get lucky and Calvin Hsia will have an epiphany over a long weekend and see a way to do this and convince management. I've seen him do things like that before. That guy is amazing. I remember informal lunch discussions where he was quite sure he could come up with a WinCE version of VFP. But I wouldn't hold my breathe and it's not like he doesn't have other priorities.

IMHO, if any xBase flavor is going to make it to the .Net platform, it's not going to be MS doing it. It be nice to see someone try, though.

>VFP 3 did seem to get some attention from VB and C++ developers just by virtue of being in the VS suite. It was covered (some) in MSDN Magazine, included at Developer Days events, etc. By the same token, some of those same developers mistook the removal of VFP from VS as a sign that it was being dropped.
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>All water long under the bridge now. I do think the people who argued against including VFP in .NET did so sincerely, believing it was the best course for the product.