>>I have no doubt you and Jeff are absolutely correct about the numbers, but it really strikes me that this doesn't speak well of the intellectual curiosity of people who use a development language for a living and who have never even googled to see what resources might be out there for support or answering questions.
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>>Even in the early days, before the web, when CIS Foxforum was the "community" I wouldn't think much of a "Foxpro developer" who had never even heard of it.
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>>When I hear that I hear "drone".
>
>When we were actively hiring new devs at another job I had come up with 10 questions we could ask during a phone interview to help narrow the list of applicants (and not waste their time our ours to bring them in for an interview). One of those was to basically name a few VFP-related websites. We wouldn't automatically disqualify them for this one question but there was a surprising (not) correlation between devs who could name a few sites vs. devs who couldn't.

Exactly. In the late 90s I was contracted by a number of companies to find Foxpro developers. One of the things I would ask is "If you have a Foxpro problem or want ask a question about a new technique, where would you go?" I would get answers like "My boss." "Uh, I think there's a help file" "Call Microsoft tech support" (that one always made me smile.) These would also often be folks who had every language you've ever heard of on their resume. (listing the name probably exhausting 80% of their knowledge of actually using the language) If someone never buys a book unless it is required and never looks for more information unless their boss tells them to ...

What I look for in developers - or pretty much anybody - is mental horsepower. And a lot of that can be measured in curiosity. I don't want a drone working for me and I don't want to work with drones. Yeah, they work cheap, they do what they're told and they always make you feel superior because they never know anything you don't spoon feed them.

But they are boring people.