>>They could and they should.

Without strong typing and the obligation to declare variables, in VFP you can simply assign values at the command line, without a compiler protest and without the variable immediately going out of scope. Easier in some other languages to write a little prg and execute it, just as you must in VFP if you want to iterate or process a loop.

Also worth noting that VFP apps don't just carry along a runtime: they bring the interpreter/compiler. Always it was said that using the interpreter for Macro Substitution/EVAL() is slower than p-code, but actually the performance hit occurs when the interpreter is loaded, after which speed is roughly comparable to p-code IME. This isn't such a great surprise when so much of the web is run by PHP and Javascript distributed as the equivalent of a prg rather than a frx.