>>>But I find it amusing that defending it against a world that has moved on has taken on cult-like status as people dither for a decade over where to go next hoping to find something that can approach the wonders of the magic Fox.
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>Yeah, yeah. If you want to be amused, be amused about developers who focus on buggy whip superiority while the Henry Fords of the IT world have introduced automobiles/mobile devices that are selling so well that only the most willful stick-in-the-muds refuse to accept that the world has changed. ;-) ... and won't it be even more amusing to hear people insisting that one particular buggy whip (C#) will still be useful to somebody driving a car. ;-)

Buggy whips always come in handy - if only to seek redress from scoundrels ! <s>

Ok, fair point. ( I thought my analogy to the Hawken rifle was better <g> )

Actually I was talking about being genuinely amused by Hank Fay's frequent announcements of languages and programming paradigms I've never heard of ( not really saying much as my world is very small and insular ) and their technological wonders and loose typing and overall foxiness and my god I'm exhausted trying to keep up. <s>

Now don't get me wrong, I have no doubt Hank is actually smart enough and hard-working enough to really examine all those technologies in depth and master them and use them and I know how he feels about strong typing and fussy compilers and degustibus non disputandum est.

Ed Leafe is a good friend and he got me all excited about Dabo five years or so ago but I'm not sure how far the ball has moved forward there and in that time I've seen where VS has gone.

the quest for the holy ( ie. anything but microsoft ) language seems to be an end rather than a means and that is what I meant about the whole thing as intellectual exercise. And I think there is a lot to be said for a critical mass of top tier developers working in a technology. vs eTechnologia.

I see this quest for foxish esoterica as quite distinct from your touting new stuff like Android which is obviously geared toward capturing the future and not based on nostalgia for the past. ( I've been looking into all that based on your recommendation and find it fascinating - but not because I miss VFP <g> )