>>If you think about it our run with VFP on Windows 95 and its successors, considering the pace of technical change, was a pretty good one.
>>I switched to .NET for practical reasons - the rates are good- but it's certainly not what VFP was in its time, nor is anything else that I've seen.

With respect- do you hear yourself?! Service is supposed to be key in the US and your vendor supplier has pushed you away from a model that worked well for you- for whose benefit? You ordered a steak and they brought a luke warm tofu patty and dropped in on the ground in front of you and the server scooped it up along with hair and lint, sneezed on it, then delivered it to you and you said "I thought I wanted steak but thanks so much for bringing me this."

Seems to me that we developers need a kick in the proverbial. We are receiving awful, awful service from vendor/s to whom most of us gave our loyalty for years. Even the proven vendor tactic of appointing good boys and girls to be gurus rather than letting us choose our own, isn't enough to disguise the mess things are in.

What I keep hearing is people saying that it is what it is and we're sure things will get better. Sorry but I cry foul. We need to go back to Basics (literally.) People have known how to write cross-platform interpreters/compilers for more than 30 years to my certain knowledge so an app can run on multiple runtimes without a Rube Goldberg contraption. So why is there such a mess today? Seems to me that vendors are busy fighting to own chunks of the market by trying to create dependencies no matter the consequence. Have they learned nothing?! Device customers are not fascinated by sharp swirly bits sticking out everywhere and just like last time they'll abandon the incumbents and their developer dependents at the first opportunity.