>The worst disappointment was the Office automation. Not because it's inconsistent, memory hungry, slow or clumsy (it is all of that), it's that it's a house on sand. Whatever you do may not work with the next version. I have VFP code, parts of which were written in 1989, which still works.

1989? VFP3 didn't come out until mid-1995. COM-based automation wasn't introduced by Microsoft until 1993.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_FoxPro#Version_Timeline
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model

I have some code from 1989 that still works (1987 even), but it's not VFP code. Just generic XBASE code that was written for Fox Software's Multi-user FoxBASE+ 2.x.