Evan:

Sorry, but in the years I worked in Delphi and Borland Pascal (5.0 - 7.0), the support by other programmers (CIS forums) was at an even higher level than UT,if you can believe that.

Delphi has many commercial grade add-on and the VCL (essentially, the Delphi classes) comes with source code. If something doesn't work the way you want it, just fix it. Most 3rd party tools also come with source. There are many 3rd party database replacements for the Borland Database Engine. (Kyle Cordes maintains a Website with this information.)

World-wide there are many sites with Delphi programs, tools, utilities, etc.

Coriolis Publishers (Jeff Duntemann, et. al) http://www.coriolis.com/ has a bi-monthly 150+ page magazine, Visual Developer, that focuses on VB, VC++, Java, Delphi, and many other odd-ball languages. It is 19.95 per year and ALL source code is available at their Website, free to everyone.

The 1.0 debugger was at about the same level as VFP 6.0. (Delphi is now up to 5.0) What I liked is the ability to trace down into the VCL code. If I didn't understand what was happening, I could find out. (Not like trying to check for the existence of a file "A:\dummy.txt" and having VFP tell me that it is present because there is a similar file on my path.) I could set breakpoints in the editor, run the program and have it stop. When I had seen all I was interested in, I could hit ctrl-break, and the debugger stopped.

Error trapping, even in 1.0 was very easy to use and understand. I didn't have to worry about which Error event or .prg is grabbing the error.

Delphi is a Windows language that uses handles and cursors that allows me to control the icon displayed while a process is running. Not only can it create ActiveX controls, it doesn't run into the same problems we've had with DynamicCube's pivot table control. If one wants to, Delphi allows the use of automated testing software because of it handles.

Delphi units are compiled and works so much better in a multi-programmer environment with VSS. We have 5 programmers working on a project, and we each have to have all of the components writable, so VFP can update stuff inside of the table. In Delphi, I could check out code, re-compile it, put the unit back in VSS and all other developers checked it out as a read-only file. Unless, it was checked out (or I diddled the attribute), I didn't have to worry about making changes to form and then losing them when I got the latest code from VSS.
(There's nothing like re-building an .EXE and getting an "unable to update cursor" error. What table is read-only? VFP knew, just tell me.)

Delphi can create objects on the fly. In 1.0, the developer had to free up the object reference or memory leaks occurred. VFP is MUCH better in this regard.

Just because you can add an object at run-time, doesn't mean it is a good idea. What I mean is that as long as this code works, OK, but when it doesn't, not being able to easily find the code in the editor can slow down solving the problem.

So, why am I on this forum, and programming in VFP. Follow the money! There are more opportunities in Michigan in VFP than in Delphi. I've been self-employed and the looking for work is more than I can handle. I always had work, but I gave up long-ago on getting rich writing a killer-app and prefer the financial security and working with others. VFP has it's flaws, but so have the 10 or so other languages I've programmed in.

HTH