Bill is correct in noting that your analogies have some flaws. Take for example the 8 track tape. It was the consumer market place that dictated its failure, not an executive decision at the manufacturer that 1/4" (I think) should replace those gawd awful devices that gobbled tape for breakfast lunch and dinner. Compared to newer technology 8 track couldn't complete. In the case of VFP, it still compares well against the competition but it was an executive decision at MS that killed it, not the natural forces of competition in the market place.

Likewise for VHS, DVD, and Blueray. Better technology came along and the older technologies could not complete. Again not the situation that prevails with VFP. Also, VHS tapes are not useless, you can play them on a tape player and if ambitious enough convert them to either digital or a newer media - that's what I'm doing.

The technology shifts you describe come from the marketplace, they were not dictated from on-high and they offered advantages to the final consumer. The ultimate elimination of VFP was not a reaction to the marketplace, it was an attempt at picking winners and losers by MS decision makers and understandably has not been well received by the developer community.

There is no good rationale for what MS did with VFP To many of us that's obvious and trying to defend their actions is futile. Its better to simply admit MS screwed up, the situation is as it is today, now what direction do you want to go in. What MS did removes loyalty from the equation and makes community driven tools, like Java or Python, so much more attractive.

I think this dead horse is pretty much whipped in to something beyond death. Time to go work on some 25+ year old code and fiddle with some prototypes for smartphones.

>You're being short sighted.
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>How do you think gaming consoles affected companies that create those games? How did the people have to change their skill sets to move to the next console?
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>How did moving from 8 track to cassette affect the companies that made the tapes and recording devices, or even the playback devices?
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>Even customers complained. I have heard MANY people complain about their libraries of VHS tapes that are pretty much useless, "It's too expensive to buy everything again on DVD". That became, "It's too expensive to buy everything again on Blueray". I'm now hearing, "I have to move everything now to the cloud? Do you know how much I've invested in DVDs?" I know people that have thousands of dollars tied up in out dated movie technologies. That is not "little expense" to move to something new.
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>How about TV changes that are happening now? I don't have an HD flat panel TV. My old CRT TV works. But...broadcasters insist on using the wide screen to their advantage and I frequently see things cut off on the sides.
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>Technology shifts DO affect consumers in very real, financial ways.
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>>James is right, you're comparing apples to oranges. The Microsoft customer we are addressing are developers, someone who has invested a considerable sum into a piece of software, an asset that then has considerable value. When MS changes course the value of that asset is affected,sometimes tremendously and that customer is hurt. OTOH a piece of hardware like video player, or a game console has no comparable value to a customer, nothing anywhere near what a software application does to a developer or company who "rolls their own". Furthermore, there is little expense required to "retrain" for another video player, automobile, and so forth.
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>>You mention IBM, a wise company, on whose systems you can still run applications written in '74 COBOL, PL/1, RPG-II, BAL, and more, languages dating back decades. This protects the investment their customers have in their software. MS could learn something from IBM.