Jim,

>mounting soapbox. . .
>
>1) What is this "trend" to thin-client, etc??? Maybe for Internet apps that might be a "trend", but there is far more to the world you know. Not every business - in fact not all that many bisnesses - have a *need* for Internet deployment.
>

It is a trend driven by Microsoft, Netscape (AOL), IBM, Sun, major corporations, and others. It is not a "Microsoft" thing, it is the way things are going.

Businesses may not need internet presense but the value of training users on one interface for all apps is a very compelling issue. Users able to access the internet and the internal intranet with the saem tool is a major asset for the inter/intranet trend.

Also the ability to use Macs, PC's, Sun workstations, IBM AS400's all in teh same intranet is a pretty compelling issue for many companies.

>2) So I guess that HTML supplanting VB is the source of the paranoia in the VB camp? Well, isn't that special now... *we* can be gleeful for the paranoia of the VB camp while, all the while, VFP is whittled away to be a mere shadow of its former self! Let's all smirk together at the VB camp while we go down in flames!
>

HTML is not supplanting VB, VB can create HTML and it can be used as servers on teh intra/internet server side, as can VFP.

>Evan, I too have been 'learning' VB, but I must admit that other pressures plus my heart not really being in it has me moving very slowly on the effort. But the true problem is that I resent "having" to learn another language and I am very sure that I will NOT be proficient in *ANY* by the time I have "learned" it. I also resent having to 'use the right tool for the job' because FP/VFP *could* (have) done it all and had MS cared to it could have worked well for current (ie internet, ect) stuff too.

Jim, this csounds like the Cobal programmers who used to tell me that PC's were just toy computers that would never amount to anything.

>MS decrees a "trend", does much to push it, and *hopes* that the trend "takes". If it doesn't, it evolves thing towards something else, all the while never admitting that that was their gambit.

Agasin, the issues being discussed in this thread are a far cry from a "MS Trend". There are many large hardware an software companies who are promoting this "trend".

>I admit apprehension and disappointment at the way VFPers follow right along as puppets on a string. I'm convinced we could give the great choirs of the world a real run for their money, so good are we at taking MS' latest songbook and changing songs without missing a beat. All in absolute and wonderful unison/harmony too!

You seem to have some inside line to the designers at Microsoft. You keep saying that improving the ability of VFP to play in the COM and DCOM arena is somehow going to remove all the current funcitonality and cause MS to never enhance the feature set for VFP. This is not an either/or situation. If VFP is going to survive though, it has to able to play with big boys as well as the mom and pops.

I, for one, don't want to bet my families future financial health on strictly mom and pop businesses.

However, I did just comlete a project for a small auto perfomance company, about 5 emploiyees. The project consisted of a web site, and intrnet and some business apps. The big piece was the internet ordering system for their parts. A very small business that seems to contradict your findings, even small businesses are starting to want the internet.