>Fox jobs all over the country. What you see there is a small sample of what is available. You can't judge the market by one web site or even two or three. My bet is there are hundreds of Fox jobs that never make it to these job web sites. >

Hi Craig,

Well, I agree with you that those web job boards are not a good measure of the future or current status of VFP. Many Small to medium size companies simply do not advertise on those sites, since they are seeking a database solution rather than someone to program with a specific tool. I've been running my own company for the past 3+ years, and it's rare that a client will request that I use a specific development tool. Instead, they tell me how they want to automate their business, and leave the choice of software tools up to me. As I said, many of the small and moderate size companies look for solutions, rather than experts in specific technologies.

I personally think that the future of VFP is very dependent on whether "we" the developers continue to buy the latest versions and use it to provide solutions for our clients. If developers lose interest in VFP and stop buying the updates, then there will be a problem. My main concern is that the rumors will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. That developers like myself will get frightened from the rumors, and go somewhere else. This would result in Microsoft dropping the product because there is no longer enough revenue to support it.

I would be more interested to know how many developers are leaving the FoxPro community and how many are staying. I'm not sure that you will find too many new developers entering the VFP community, especially since the product is not being made visible enough to new developers. However, there is a huge base of current VFP developers. I think the key is whether the current VFP developers are going to continue using VFP in the long term.

I think it's too bad that Microsoft won't give VFP a boost somehow. If they did a little more publicity with the product, I'm sure this would alleviate a lot of fears. It would also attract more developers to the product.

Dave