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>Put on your asbestos apron, Mr. Flores, `cause you're about to be flamed!
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>For as long as the "FoxPro is dead" rumours have been floating around, people have been ready to dismiss them because some pointy-haired manager heard from his brother's doctor's dentist's accountant's second cousin that Microsoft isn't betting the farm on the future of Visual FoxPro. Those kind of rumours are just speculation, conjecture, and bald-faced lies.
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>What Mr. Anderson is trying to do is relay second-hand information from someone who has actually spoken with a representative of Microsoft. Granted, the person in question is with the consulting arm, and not directly involved with the day-to-day decisions of what stays and what leaves Visual Studio, but they are still closer to these decision-makers than most of us. For such a person to flat-out say to omit a prospective employee's FoxPro experience from their resume is to convey the general feeling which is coming from Microsoft headquarters.
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>As for the water-cooler talk and what the friend of a friend who works at Microsoft Consulting might "know", then that should probably be taken with a grain of salt. For that matter, so should anything which does not explicitly come from Bill Gates, Robert Green, or anyone who works directly for the Visual Studio product development team.
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>Mr. Anderson is not trying to stir up the pot, and he himself states that some of what he hears is contrary to what we ourselves "know." Then again, what do we really know that is not tainted to a great degree by our own hopes and fears for Visual FoxPro? See my above paragraph for a list of those whose opinions are beyond reproach.
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>To belittle Mr. Anderson by accusing him of spreading a "preposterous rumor" and dismissing his information as crap (see, I'm not afraid to use the word) is insulting in the extreme, not to mention highly unprofessional to an on-line colleague. to further suggest that he post this message on the VB forum in the hopes of seeking credibility is insulting to VB developers as well. I doubt that any of the VB developers genuinely want their product of choice to be propped up at the expense of another time-tested Microsoft product.
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>Unless you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that what Mr. Anderson's friend told him is a lie, and unless you yourself are privy to these water-cooler conferences regarding Microsoft Consulting's attitudes toward VFP, I would suggest you refrain from dismissing Mr. Anderson's comments as heresay and crap. As difficult as it may be for us to accept, he might just be right.
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>To all others who read this message,
> I apologize for subjecting you to this response to Mr. Flores' ill-manered and condescending message. Hopefully, you were not offended by either his message or my reply, and perhaps you may even agree wih some of what I've written. If so, contact anyone you know at Microsoft Consulting or the Visual Studio development team, relay to them what has been written here by Mr. Anderson, and try to get confirmation or denial. Let's take this out of the realm of unsubstantiated rumour and into the black-and-white world of fact or fiction.

If that's not stirring up the pot then I don't know what is. The problem is these kinds of posts bring detriment to us all, but in a greater degree to those newcomers that are starting to see what a great tool VFP can be and then find this kind of c**p boiling inside the guts of one of the top VFP forums. I think it is highly irresponsible for anyone to start such a posting with just a "I heard from ... that VFP is toast".

If you're going to sit idle I'm not. If you think I'm afraid of something you're dead wrong. These are the things where I don't feel the need to be politically correct. I will refrain myself of nothing. This is something we definitely don't need.

Furthermore, my reply speaks my mind (I have a right for that), and to a lesser degree aims at the originator of the message to feel confronted, not insulted. I don't believe my reply questions the credibility of Mr. Anderson either, but that of his source. Yes, what his friend told him is unsubstantiated, and you only need to go to the VFP home page to find out that the next version is coming out. Are you going to sustain that nobody really knows what is going to happen? Or that the people at MS who allegedly said this are more of an official source than what is posted on the web site? Give me a break.

Lastly, to me being a professional does not equate being nice or polite. It means doing the best job that you can do with the tools you know.

Regards,