A truly awesome story, Tom. I commend you.

I must admit that I have used VFP extensively, and well beyond its native abilities because I have significant Win32 C/C++ programming experience. When I have had something that VFP won't do, I've simply written it into my own custom DLL.

In that way (through my custom DLL exensions) I have found NOTHING that VFP won't do, and I've found its class/object structure and designer tools to be amazing, though I wish you could edit a class already in use, or edit a parent class without having to exit out and do so ... and I've heard in other 3rd party apps you can, but I've never used any.

In short, I've been able to make VFP do cartwheels because of my custom DLL abilities.

I would have no hesitation whatsoever in suggesting to a client that they use VFP ... because the project can be done so quickly, as you say.

My opinion ... I'm sure I stand alone ... and also alone in pursuing a goal like Visual FreePro. :-)

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As an aside, in 2010, I wrote a Receiving application for a major automotive manufacturer in the U.S. in two days. It provided functionality the parts manager had been dreaming of and drooling over in other apps ... for years. No developers had ever been able to give them these abilities on their home-grown system.

Using VFP9, I gave it to them in two days. They went to the managers and told them what they had ... and the managers said "You knew this was a stop-gap measure until we get the new system online".

About six months later they got their new system, and it was horrid. Nearly as bad as a text-based terminal app.

The parts manager wound up leaving shortly after this. I always like to think it's because he saw what he could have, and after that ... it just wasn't the same. :-) Though, it was probably for other reasons. LOL! :-)

>I used Fox Base, Fox Pro and Visual Fox Pro to support my family and myself. Most of my programming was done in the San Francisco Bay Area. Take a look at my profile and see some of the projects I worked on.
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>We have a very strong presence from Microsoft in our area. When Microsoft took over FoxPro, they pushed it to the rear of the train. The sales staff from Microsoft has a very strong hold on corporations of any size in our area. They would tell corporations to not use FoxPro, or Visual FoxPro.
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>I was hired by NUMMI in May of 2000, and given a huge project, for Toyota and General Motors, and over two hundred suppliers throughout the nation. It had to be a web project, and I was hired because of my skills in that area and others. After I was hired I was told that I could not use Visual FoxPro, because the Microsoft sales staff in Mountain Vies, California, said it was not a good product. The reason they hired me was because of my Visual FoxPro skills, experience, and the two demos I gave of applications I had created.
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>My first week at the new job was spent creating a web page which had strict legal requirements as to where each object, letter, font size, etc. would be. It took forty hours to complete and I had to use C#. I had spent a week of training with Rick Strahl, learning how to use his product to create Visual FoxPro applications using the web. I contacted Rick and he gave me a list of (if memory serves me correctly) sixty four big clients of his. Clients like HP, D.O.D., etc. Rick also gave me a few ideas how to approach this topic.
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>I immediately contacted Ken Levy at Microsoft (Ken was also in the class that Rick gave), and Ken immediately volunteered to fly down to Fremont, California, to talk to management. I spent one hour that weekend creating the required web page in Visual FoxPro, and 15 minutes web enabling it. The page was identical to the one I did with C#. What makes more sense – 40 hours per page or 1 hour 15 minutes?
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>Monday morning, armed with a binder I created explaining what I was proposing, using Visual FoxPro and Rick’s methodology, a list of major customers, and more details, including Key’s offer to fly down, I set off to see management. I was immediately shot down! Visual FoxPro will not be allowed to be used as a development tool at NUMMI!
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>So I went on to create a complex web application that ultimately contained 309 web pages, and tied together Toyota, and General Motors, and its suppliers in real time. I will say that we used SQL Server, which I have used with Fox Pro for many years.
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>About a year later NUMMI had a critical need for an application to tie together engineering, manufacturing and management. They called all their H1B’s from India, and they all said the same thing! “It cannot be done”! We had lots of H1B’s and everyone knows that they are “expert in all things”!
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>I offered to do the program as I saw no difficulty in doing so. It was complex, but so what? The company was so hard up they agreed to let me do it. I went home that evening and made a copy of my personal Visual FoxPro framework. The next morning I went to work, put in an 8 hour shift, came back the next day and completed the project at 1 PM. A total of 15 hours were spent to complete the project. It had several complex reports that were printed on 11” X 19” paper. There were many columns and had I not had my framework, it would have taken much longer. The program was still running daily nine years later, not having failed even once! NUMMI no longer exists, but not because of my program! :)
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>Visual FoxPro, my framework and the framework developed by Drew Speedie, Visual MaxFrame Professional, made me a lot of money as a full time consultant and full time employee.
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>The computer world is ever changing. The reality is that few clients will let you use Visual FoxPro, once Microsoft has talked to them. Because of the way computer hardware, software and operating systems are, constantly changing, it is increasingly difficult to determine the life span of anything. Will Visual FoxPro work with computers and operating systems of the future? You are at risk if you think there will be no incompatibilities.
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>From a business perspective, I would be very careful pushing Visual FoxPro as a development tool. Web apps still seem like the way to go and C# is my favorite tool. I found too many problems with any tool called Basic, Visual Basic etc.
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>Good luck and thank you to all those involved with FoxPro in all its forms, for allowing me to support my family and get two kids through college!
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>Tom
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>>Hi All,
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>>A large Corporate Client of mine was prepared to update a VFP 9 App until they went on Microsoft's VFP Main page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vfoxpro/bb190225.aspx and got scared by the statement:
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>>"Note that Visual FoxPro 9.0 is the last version and was published in 2007. For a great solution for building modern business applications, take a look at LightSwitch in Visual Studio 2012"
>>
>>which they interpreted this as "Microsoft is telling us to use another product."
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>>So we have another case of FUD - Fear, Uncertainy Doubt..So I have to reassure them..
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>>Any articles around to make the business case for VFP?
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>>BTW, Already own the wonderful Henztenwerke Book: The Business Case for Moving (Some) Business Applications to VFP in 2013 - Highly Recommended