>>>>Having to retool and rewrite with technology advances is what keeps most of us in business. Do you use a rotary phone and a party line or have you progressed every few years with everyone else and had to relearn and reload a new phone?
>>>
>>>That is the dumbest comment I've read in this post. When you change phones, you simply go out and buy a new one start using it. Perhaps you are somewhat handicapped when it comes to changing phones.
>>>
>>>How can you compare that to the re-writing an application that has taken 3 or 4 years to write and may take 3 or 4 years to convert, not counting the time it takes to learn the new development language?
>>>
>>>Besides, I thought I was keeping up by upgrading to each new version of VFP whenever they came out. It is my opinion that what MS has done is almost criminal and I don't associate with criminals.
>>
>>So if you were a telephone (rather than a software) manufacturer and had invested large amounts of time perfecting rotary dial phones you would continue to do so and hope no-one noticed the touch tone, cordless, video capable, answering machine equiped models alongside it on the shelf? (g,d&r)
>
>One dumb comment followed by another does not warrant a response. We're not talking telephones, we're talking software that has taken many, many years to evolve. Initially written in dbase II and through numerous iterations from Wordtech's compiler, then clipper, then Foxpro Dos/Win, and finally VFP. All the time, evolving - not so much interface wise, but feature wise.
>

Not sure whether mine was one of the dumb comments or whether I was the one who should not have responded?
Also not sure whether, using the analogy, the rotary telephone was supposed to represent the development tool or the applications produced by it....

>Can it be re-written? Sure, absolutely, but at what cost? And who pays...?

FWIW, our oldest running VFP app (actually a VFP/VB6 mix) is about 12 years old. Until about two years ago we were adding various bells and whistles. Now the product is stable and has evolved as far as it is likely to go. The only requests we currently get for additions are from a very small number of people and would be clunky to implement in VFP. We're re-writing the whole thing in .NET.
Costly? Yes.
Who pays? Future Customers.
Companies, unlike individuals, don't get old and retire (well they do - but it shouldn't be inevitable)

I guess the above could apply just as much to MS/VFP as us/our product.
Regards,
Viv