>I usually tell them that Microsoft is simply not creating new versions anymore. Unfortunately they forgot to create a vaiable alternative to the strengths of VFP. Therefore we wait for the next wave of new technology (in regards to dynamic types languages) as we don't see the current strict type .NET languages as a viable alternative.
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>Walter, about 4-5 years ago (when you were making the same argument), there were a small # of people who answered questions in the .NET forum. Today, there are people posting answers in the .NET forum who, 4-5 years ago, were only working in VFP. So it's funny how people are managing to make the switch, are able to build applications using .NET/SQL, even with these "glaring" deficiencies.
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>I'm not saying that I don't find the language features in .NET 4.0 and beyond to be trivial - they seem interesting - but this concept of "no viable alternative" isn't consistent with reality.

Kevin. It really depends on what you want to do with the tool. I'm sure many, if not most, developers here do not really need the dynamic language and they are following the trends to earn a living. I've got a huge investment in VFP and some of the software heavily relies on the dynamicness of VFP that just can't easily be ported to any strict typed language. Personally If find strict typed languages 'backwards' for most purposes: Typing lots of text to keep the compiler happy. Only if you really need to code for speed, it does make sense.

Dynamic typed languages technically could have early typo error checking as well as strict typed languages and in essence VFP already does this to a limited extent. This technology needs to mature.

When the time comes I really can't earn a living in VFP anymore, I probably move towards repository based development, which IMO is far superiour to the clumsy way we are developping right now. Tell me, why the hell do we still develop in flat plain textfiles while we could store the sourcecode in a database and develop directly on the database without any file based resources? the technology has been there for about two decades. I really feel that MS has thrown us back into the 80ties in this respect.