>>>It's more likely that people are adding RPG or CICS/COBOL to their arsenals than Fox.
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>I reluctantly concluded that Fox was a spent force in 1995 when Sigler damned the newly released VFP3 with faint praise. But I'm still a believer in 4GL languages that can be interpreted or compiled to something useful. The first one of those I used was Andy Gariepy's compiler for TRS-Basic in the 1970s. It converted bulky TRS-Basic code into Z80 instructions = compact and quick, but also offered cross-platform options including MSDOS and Apple. That's how long people have known how to turn proprietary interpreted 4GL into something hot that works cross platform. So why are we instead reduced to Rube Goldberg artisan sculpturing for mobile development all these decades later? You tell me.
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>Meanwhile in 2018 I'd have to say that Xbase remains a thoroughly readable 4GL including for Newbies or anybody who ever used a Basic 4GL. And today I'm experimenting with compilation to the most recent x64 VC++14.1 , though it's a trick shot, since in real life 32-bit VC++7 remains widely prevalent in the wild.
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>I know some here like to scoff at use of Xbase for C++ generation, but the ranks of those who write natively in C++ are thin and getting thinner. Many C++ developers use a framework or generator and once compiled, only hackers are motivated to pick it apart trying to recreate the VC++ .h sourcecode or determine origin.
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>A better question especially for those who remember the Dr Dave era, might be that if you can already compile Xbase to .h files to be compiled for Windows ... then why not to Objective-C for iOS, or Android C++? The combination of a highly readable 4GL and cross platform compilation with as few runtimes or dependencies as possible, would be a game-changer IMHO.
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>I think the problem is that corporates are determined to bolt such features onto their own development darling, which delights good old Rube Golderg.
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>Oh, and Happy New Year!

I've converted all but a few of my VFP apps to C#.
The few remaining just run so well that unless some major change comes along, they'll keep chugging.
Here's something interesting, though - for one-off handy-dandy programs I was using VFP9 rather than C# because - I thought- of its relative simplicity and brevity.
In fact, now I've been programming C# 99% of the time I've now begun using it for the one-off's.
I was just more familiar with VFP, it seems.
It called to mind Ben Hogan's reply when someone asked what kind of golf clubs he used:
"The mechanic is lot more important than the tools."

Happy New Year to you!