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You can take up VFP, and if your marketplace stays focused on the types of apps that VFP is centered on, it's not a bad choice.
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I would disagree as it would be too limiting. And, the following statement by you also is good reasoning as to why anybody new to development would be wasting his/her time learning VFP:

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OTOH, an investment in both VB and SQL pays off not only in their own environments, but across the board - VB translates to VBScript, VBA and related areas, SQL ( particularly T-SQL in conjunction with ADO) will apply to almost any data-centric application, regardless of language, and the concepts apply uniformly across platforms and to some extent across products.
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The evolution is this:

- Learn the syntax
- Learn to program
- Learn to analyize and design
- Learn to develop

Learning how to program is so far down the food chain when it comes to developing applications. I know many folks who could quote you verbatim lines of syntax. Yet many of these people have never developed an application.

What is the point...??

The point is that the devil is in the details. When your learning is at that level, you need to make a choice. You can only learn one at a time. Anybody who tells you differently is a liar and is full of crap. Therefore, if you have time to learn one language, my choice would be VB - for the opportunities you describe. And of course, there is also the overhead of having to learn database concepts if you don't have that already.


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IOW, even if VB or SQL Server do not become your poredominant development environment, the knowledge you gain will apply to other language platforms and areas of the MS world; VFP is not applicable as widely, and is going tgo offer few benefits outside VFP itself compared to VB.
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Again, you are making the case why VFP is a not too wise investment for people joining the developer ranks....

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If the target is an income in the next 6-12 months is the specific issue, well, you're dead on about .NET not being the way to go, since we're looking at a year or so before a live deployment goes, and having seen the MSDN distribution of the Whistler Beta at last, probably a good deal longer before the whole thing ready to serve to the general public.
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I am not even going to waste my time installing the thing. I have done enough R and D for MS on my own time.....It is somebody elses turn. And FWIW, while I buy into some of the tactical aspects of .Net, I don't buy into the overall strategy...


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