>Well thought out post. Let me put my spin on it: In my experience, people don't look at VB as an enterprise solution. Maybe for a simple front-end for simple data entry or reporting, but not brute force processing and critical DP. I think the quality of VB programmers has degraded over time and there are a lot of VB developers out there won't can't see out of the VB box.

>I think, perceptually, that it's wrong to think of VB as a competing platform. I think we should be looking at PowerBuilder, Prolifics, and Oracle tools as competition. There are high-end markets that VB would be laughed out of where VFP has a fighting chance.

I think a lot has changed recently in that regard. I don't think VB
is being laughed out of very many places these days as VB is pushed
as a component container. Mixing enterprise components and technologies
VB is as good a choice as anything. VFP has the same chance here as
has any good COM client - VB defines COM client standards though and
that makes it the primary choice for better or worse.

Personally, I just really dislike the Basic language and its
inconsistencies.

In relation to large Oracle/Powerbuilder competition:

What's funny is that I've seen a few projects recently that went the Oracle
tools route. Sad scene. Two junior level VFP coders ended up rewriting the
original Oracle app in two weeks after a clan of 'enterprise developers' worked
on this app for 3 months without showing any progress.

+++ Rick ---