Thanks for replying again, Gerry!

>"I think the bottom line is, the toolbox changes and will keep changing, and probably should be changed every so often based on what's happening out there and what you plan to accomplish."

This sentence is the one that had the best meaning, to me, of your message (the whole message was very helpfull, of course!), as I see your mind is open and you seemed to me as a person who keep our eyes open in the future, regarding the past as a source of experience. That's how I think too, because in my long living as a programmer (just an average programmer, nothing more than that), I've had to change from tool to tool, from OS to OS and so forth, as technology environment changed and, sure, it will keep changing.

>"So, if one wants to say VFP "competes", one has to be more specific in terms of the conditions under which VFP is "competive"."

Sorry for not making me understandable. What I mean by competition is what a person or a company does when they evaluate what product(s) will be chosen to be used as their main development tool(s) (that's the obvious part). And the data centric feature of VFP seems, IMO, not to matter any more when considering tools to build, other than, small apps, and then MS Access is the competition. That's my perception, but it's true where I live.

Want an example? Two weeks ago I attended a course in JD Edwards OneWorld (ERP package) development tools. Well, the DBMS we're using was Oracle, but the local data dictionary as many other files in our PCs was in...? Access!!! I'm not criticising then, I think it's a pretty good choice, but wouldn't VFP be a better one?

>"Most people don't use Delphi because they worry that Borland might not be around. Other than that, Delphi (and it's "cousins" C++ Builder and Kylix) are superior to MS VB and VC in terms of "rapid application development" and elegance."

Most people don't use VFP, as well, because they worry that VFP might not be around, too, but the Delphi community keeps growing in a rate greater that ours (sometimes I think, saddly, that there are more people getting out than in), that's my perception, and Borland gives far more support and exposure to Delphi than MS to VFP.

As an example, here in Brazil, where I live you can't find virtually any books about VFP in portuguese (I said virtually because may exist some, but I never found then), even VFP7 has no portuguese localized version, and that's a real barrier to spread it's usage and is a strong factor of consideration when evaluating a tool (as to as how many VFP programmers are around). All that isn't true, for Delphi, and all the best books, even the latest ones about Delphi 6 can easilly found in portuguese, and that's a strong factor in Delphi's favor.

Pardom me, I know this is off topic and sounds like I'm complaining, but believe me, I'm not, really! I think the complain time has gone and has no place any more, what had to be said about that already was, now the evaluate time has come, IMO.

Thanks again,

Fernando

P.S. I recall that Jim Booth, also wrote some about this subject in FoxPro Advisor under the title The sky is falling, the sky is falling. All that remembers me what Bob Dylan wrote in one of his songs: "...and we better start swimming or we'll sink like a stone, 'cause the times, they are changing" :-)