The current editorial in Visual Basic Programmers Journal has a short review of the challenges of VB and the heros which helped VB to succeed. VFP was part of the success...

"VB's heroes come in many shapes and from some unlikely places. One rarely acknowledged hero: Visual FoxPro, which Microsoft acquired in 1992. Several of the people who were responsible for adding inheritance and many other features to FoxPro eventually joined the VB team, including Rob Copeland, Drew Fletcher, and the tenacious Eric Rudder. This group played a critical role in a dev team transitioning from VB3's 16-bit programming world to VB4's 32-bit-programming, classes, OLE Automation, and COM."

http://www.vbpj.com/upload/free/features/vbpj/2001/07jul01/en0107/en0107.asp