Hi Alex,

>Vin, you took the words right out of my mouth! It is very true that legacy apps will continue for years to come, even for a "dead" language. Can we spell COBOL?
>
>And as the world turns, the marginal "programmers" will be left out. Less competition. More quality and professionalism left in.
>
>
--big snip

Reading some of the other content in this thread and having visited the VB.NOT page, it statrs to feel like MS is moving toward a major blunder.

It's easy to say 'the marginal "programmers" will be left out', but that's not the real issue/problem here as I see things.
The issue is backward compatibility. The issue is several MILLION 'programmers' being shafted. These are the very same programmers that Bill G. courted for years and who form the backbone of one of MS' major revenue streams. A programming language adopted by countless shops as their standard based on the meavy promotion done for years and years from the very top of MS to the lowest trenches.

IBM did similarly in the mid sixties and only got away with it for one reason - a solemn promise to NEVER DO IT AGAIN! But keep in mind that that was when the number of installed computers they had numbered less than 5,000 *and* the business use of computers generally was still in its infancy.

This is way different, too, in that "legacy" is not a word that the VB adopters will accept - they are using VB precisely to be up-to-date and to be a part of the future. This was the major MS selling point and they bought it hook, line and sinker.

I don't think MS is so dumb as to ingore the growing resentment. If nothing else it provides an excellent excuse for shops to look very seriously at Linux or other UNIX services.
If the groans turn into howls (and indications are strong that they will) then MS is bound to do something about the situation to placate the millions who are in jeopardy. And I wouldn't necessarily expect that to be a good thing for VFP, but who can say for sure.

Yes, these are interesting times alright, but MS will have no option but to react with something significantly favourable to the VB population. If they also stick with .NET as originally envisioned then something will have to suffer somewhere in MS. Hopefully it will be something like that 'x-box' or even the Office suite or something away from platforms/programming products generally, but who knows.

Cheers,

JimN