>Hey Michael. First of all, great sig line. ...

it's ready to explode any time now!

Thanks for your reply Vin!

I like many others out here, been around since the dinosaurs (of PC's), I made the switch from CP/m to DOS from DOS to Windows... I started in dBASE on a Xerox 820 (8" floppies!) and Osborne, picked up Clipper, to FoxPro to Visual FoxPro (with lots of products in between), and will make the move into whatever follows. In my current position, I took a 20K cut to gain the skill set necessary (not to mention resume material) to continue with my career.
I stood on the sideline and watched as Clipper whither after CA bought them (I did learn Visual Objects- cool product but not intuitive), as well as others, and I see it happening now with VFP.

For this reason I feel we have nothing to loose, only something to gain!
Call me naive, call my attempt pathetic (not you) but we can complain about the situation until pigs fly, or try to improve the situation. I vote for the 2nd choice, the question is what can we do, where with our limited resources can we make a difference?

I could end with many quotes, hmmm how does it go.. "It's better to try and loose than never to try at all" (or is that love?, < s >)

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>>I may be wrong but I agree with some others on the point that 'killer apps' >>don't espouse the development tools used in creating them (except to us >>geeks). What tool was used for Sidekick, or 123, or Quickbooks, IMO most >>users don't care. That said, if we could create a list of commonly known >>applications which were developed in VFP (or maybe push it to include xBASE >>migrated to VFP) with testamonies from the authors (stating such things as >>how much faster it is to develop and maintain a VFP app) and put that in >>front of the decision makers, I would think that could help.
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>I can't help but think, as I follow this thread, that this would be but a small drop in a very large bucket. (Not directed at your comments alone, but the general sentiment of this thread). While some folks here on the UT might think, "wow, there are loads and loads and loads of people using VFP -- look at that -- 81 people are on-line *right now*! What if we all combined forces?" I think one needs to step back and look at the picture more realistically. A few thousand people saying "hey everyone, this product is great. listen here! listen here!" just won't amount to much in such a large and growing industry as software development/IT. What's the circulation, say, of FPA? I really don't know (I just checked the web site and couldn't find a figure) -- I'd be shocked if it were more than 15,000 though -- and a number like that is *tiny* by tech mag standards. Add in CoDE and remove the overlap and you might have a few thousand more. Still...

>I don't know if I am being pessimistic or realistic here -- but I really feel that VFP has become a niche product. An *exceptional* niche product for a lot of circumstances, and a niche product that I use whenever practical, but a niche product nonetheless. However, I don't feel that this is a reason to panic. A niche market in the IT indstry can keep you successfully employed for quite a while. Add related skills to your toolset -- SQL Server, VB, what have you -- and suddenly you are a skilled Programmer, in a period of relatively high demand.

>To be honest, I believe that the only realistic way that a huge VFP popularity turnaround could occur would be if a large Fortune 500, or large industrial, company suddenly announced that it was basing its entire infrastructure on a series of VFP-penned apps. "GE Announces Complete IT Overhaul: Visual FoxPro To Drive Company's Business and Communication." Sorry, but that's the conclusion I have come to after years of wishing it were otherwise. In programming, as in most matters, I really, really, really want to believe that revolutions start at the bottom. But they don't.