>I am in the same boat. Started with Ashton/Tate (blast from the past) Dbase and ran through to FoxBase - to FP2.#. Doing again all that I have done I would have, personally, never even looked at VFP - no 'appearance' on the world stage. As for MS not looking for new programmers - well, another thread is on that one. I am looking for programmers - don't care about MS. My corporation is growing and my time is shrinking as we do more and more systems in VFP.
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>You are right about the curve - which is something I have be braying about for yonks here - it IS a huge curve over other apps. I think perhaps even over some of the more vaunted apps (pick one). BUT - once you reach a certain point (or a series of smaller ones in my case lol) there is a glimmer of potential you see - voila!! You harness a new aspect of VFP.
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>Life is good sometimes...
>
>Ric


Ric,

I'm just starting a new user group here in the Grand Rapids, MI area. One of the things we discussed at our first meeting was the future of FoxPro. Everyone agreed that it is a wonderful tool and we want to keep using it. But we also agreed that since Microsoft is obviously not going to market it, it's up to us to raise the awareness of corporations about this wonderful tool. We also agreed that the biggest drawback is that there isn't new blood coming into the VFP world, therefore, business managers make the decision to NOT use VFP because they can't find programmers.

So what can we as a community do to get new blood using VFP. One suggestion we had was to get "local" training centers to start offering classes on VFP which might sway business managers towards VFP. That of course means that us old-timers have to teach the class :-) Companies like MicroEndeavors do a wonderful job at training, but it is costly for businesses to send people away for a week. Another suggestion was to start plastering flyers around all the local college campuses announcing the FoxPro user group meetings in hopes of attracting new people to VFP.

Just our 2 cents worth!
Cathy