Hi Larry,

There's little you can do against rumor or perception, especially if people believe what they hear. But that's often not the truth...

Currently there is NO indication that Microsoft ceases to develop and sell Visual FoxPro. In fact, version 7 is currently in development and I bet that the Microsoft team is currently already collecting possible features and enhancements for version 8. VFP is part of Visual Studio and it has a clear defined position in this collection of tools. This position is not what most people want VFP to be, ie. the middle-tier tool, but positioning VFP there is a clear statement from Microsoft to continue the product.

Why do people constantly say that FoxPro is dead? I have no answer to that, though I can guess:

First of all, Visual FoxPro is a business tool solely used by developers. There are not many chances that young people who start programming, will choose VFP as the favourite tool. There's no cheap standard version, it's not commonly used among that group. The target group of students and people who do programming as a hobby is clearly committed to VB and Delphi. These tools can be used to create all kind of application, even little tools like a calculator or whatever.

That means, in order to start using VFP (or Clarion, for example), people have to join a company that uses VFP, or find a client who wants to have her application done in VFP. Lately a third option has become available: people have Visual Studio and check out all of it components. IOW, VFP is not that well known outside of its community and doesn't really have the possibility to become well-known.

Second, VFP is no learning tool. You can't really use it to teach programmin at university or college. First, because it's a product, not a general language like C++. Second, because it doesn't implement all the features that a learning language requires. It doesn't follow the theory, like Pascal did in its first versions and so on... Thus, people won't learn VFP in college, rather C++ or any of the other languages that traditionally have been teached there.

These two points explain, why managers often don't know about VFP. What's the target audience of a book store? Is it the profession developer? Nope, it's the masses, the people that write little shareware programs at home, college students, and so on. These people don't use VFP, so why should a book store carry much of books about VFP? When a manager tries to find standards, they surely won't use developer resources, the use mass audience resources, like the bookstore. There're are little VFP books, so they conclude the VFP must be a dead product. Or they ask her kids who tell them that Delphi and Java are the most used products, yadda, yadda,....

And why does a head hunter doesn't know much about VFP? Well, VFP developers have a strong community, where people know each other. If one is looking for a new contractor, they look in the community first, and don't go to a head hunter. Even in large companies often employees make suggestions if they need more developers. Fact is, there's a massive shortage of VFP developers, but many people outside the community don't know that.

I'm sure I can find more reasons. There's nothing wrong using and learning FoxPro. You will find jobs for a long time, and when the business changes, you have learned a lot that you can use in other tools as well.

Christof