All:

How many of you read what I call the general computer press? I don't read them much any more, since they seemed to promote the latest, fastest hardware, monitors, modems, etc. I know that people need a forum to learn what's new, but anyone who thinks this stuff is representative of most computer users is ignorant.

I think that the current hype regarding Web based apps, is just the newest, hottest topic. Some one might make a good case for a company to use an INTRANET application for business-critical tasks (accounting, payroll, inventory, etc.) but a company that would put this stuff on the INTERNET probably won't know what hit them when some hacker (i.e. IBM commercial with scrub who sents salary history to everyone in the company) gets into their system. I guess there is lots of money to be made on the leading edge, but when Fortune 100 companies are still running old COBOL apps on the mainframes because it's TOOOOOO expensive to update, there will be a market for the old Fox 2.x and even my favorite, old Borland Pascal DOS apps.

IF VFP was discontinued Jan 1, xxxx, does anyone think that M$ wouldn't take what $$$'s they could get from someone who would keep it alive? I spent 3 years programming in Delphi and heard all of the same concerns: VB, C++, etc. are the only development environments that enable a developer to easily change positions. Many business decision makers don't have a clue regarding developmental tools, but they know M$ and as the OLD saw went, " No purchasing agent ever got fired for buying IBM" anything. (Substitute M$ for IBM) Bill Gates has sold the world his vision. Windows, any version, may be a good interface for Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Graphics, etc., but it is a poor interface for the heads-downs data entry that is the basis for much of business processing.

All any of us can do is keep the faith, and continue promoting quality RAD development tools.

Regards,
Mike