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For businesses offering solutions to vertical markets. VFP is still a viable development environment. >
>That's hotly debatable - I have direct knowledge where vendors lost sales because their vertical market application used Fox. (In some cases, it was because the application used Fox for data storage...in other cases, even though the VFP app worked with SQL Server, the vendor still lost business).
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>There may be factors that will improve the odds of getting a sale of a VFP app (how much or how little the app will interface with other aspects of the business) - but I can tell you with certainty that potential customers are more likely to look at the development tool for the vertical app than they were, say, 7-10 years ago.
I think you're absolutely right. The general public's expectations are changing in what an app is supposed to look and feel like and how it is supposed to interact with other parts of windows and the web. Anything done in that area in Fox was usually a kludge and has become even more so and pretty much looks it. And most of the cleverest folks in Fox who made it do tricks and punch above its weight have moved on and the most of those left behind are the least likely to be able to make it look and feel like a 21st century app in a world of Windows 7, WPF and Silverlight.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
