>I am always surprised when I read statements like the above - I wonder why it is that many people are so quick to make up Micorsoft's excuses for them???

Depends on your perspective, Jim. I'm simply stating what I believe to be the truth. I think it's rather offensive to say I'm "making up" anything.

>I believe that it is strongly arguable that MS has been solely responsible for the demise of the FP/VFP developer population, and this really has little or nothing to do with promotion.
>It has much to do, though, with product quality and product content and product direction.

The quality and content are sufficient for me to use it for database applications, and apparently for you, too, right?

>Is it only me, or might you also be bothered by the (quite) recent allegations that MS is promoting VJ++ as a mid-tier component??? If there is any truth to this at all, what does that portend for VFP???

It sounds silly to me, but frankly, I haven't been following that thread.

>Above you state, and quite correctly in my humble opinion, that "most developers only use one" (language), though you personally use more than one.
>I find myself at this very moment doing what I did my very best to avoid - learn VB 6.0! This is extremely troublesome to me, for the time it takes to the brain-power it takes to the brain cells it occupies to the learning curve before I can be proficient at the language.

I know what you mean. I've tried learning it myself, but I just have to have inheritance. It's part of my very being. :)

>It is absolutely WRONG of MS to expect that people should learn more than one language to do a reasonable job at any given moment, and I put it that way because I know and have used at least 5 languages myself, but never at the same time

I don't think they're doing that, are they?

>I have never, by the way, seen MS state in any *serious* way that VFP is the best database application language, and they certainly have demonstrated that they don't really believe such.

There was a statement (not even by Robert, if memory serves) just before I left the VFP community about a year ago that said this explicitly: VFP is the best tool for database applications.