>>>>>I see many companies (mainly SMB's) running entirely on VFP, for whom moving somewhere else would mean so many changes, so many inflection points, so many business risks that it requires a very strong engineering team to carry on safely. It also appears that many of these companies can't afford these engineering skills, for both economical and cultural reasons.
>>>
>>>There's a fundamental contradiction here.
>>>If they need a strong engineering team and can't afford one, how did they get where they are?
>>>By the way.. who DOESN'T need a strong engineering team?
>>
>>No, not necessarily a contradiction. If they have a good working system in VFP that means they hired or contracted a good dev team sometime in the past. Doesn't mean they need, or have one, now.
>
>That's true.
>A plane uses more fuel getting off the ground than it does maintaining an even speed.
>The emphasis on affordability here is what I'm questioning.
>If it cost X to get this point, the company of necessity must have been able to afford X.
>It seems to follow that if it could afford X to get to this point, if necessary it could afford some fraction of X to get to the next desirable point.
>In my view affordability, while a factor, is not as important as the end state you envision for the business.
>If you and the client have a clear vision, sooner or later an affordable solution will present itself.
>I have some clients who will be running Fox ad infinitum because it meets their needs as far as they can see.
>On the other hand some clients' processing needs are changing rapidly and they are moving quickly to PHP and .NET.
>Most, however, are a mix. They are morphing a few apps to the web via PHP, new desktop apps use .NET, and a few VFP apps will run forever.

A few will run forever. I am always interested in new platforms/languages because I am easily bored and always looking for something new. Companies don't always have the same POV. They have a keener understanding of how much they have invested in the status quo. They may not know the specific details but have a wariness of the details that might bite them in the butt after transition.