I am in the marketplace, too, and don't notice many people looking for VFP developers any more

If your goal is to be an employee in 2009 I agree that you need to offer skills in cutting for NET or LAMP.

If you're a niche player offering real cool plugins that provide certain functionality, delivering dlls via obfuscated assemblies is a standard choice. How the dll was produced is irrelevant.

If you're a company delivering apps in a competitive marketplace, the ability to roll out versions that use all the benefits of new versions of NET as they appear may be seen as a bonus.

Try this: think back to an industry niche that you enjoyed and in which you did really well. Did you notice something that could be done better? Is there a prospect for Beane Industries to produce a NET dll to execute some niche functionality really really well? If so, what would be an efficient way to develop the dll without spending 5-man-years at it and to constantly offer new versions that incorporate all the rich functionality that keeps being added in NET? IMHO you could achieve all that by spending your days becoming an internal guru with all things NET. Or there may be other ways that involve spending more time at the beach or taking more time off to be with family.