>Generally during discussions between programmers some who use VB/Access or VB/Oracle or VB/SQL or D2K/Oracle and those who use VFP it is seen that VFP is normally put down by all the others as being outdated, unreliable, not good for reporting etc.
>i have personally not had any problems but am unable to answer correctly or intelligently to the comments and sarcasm of others.
>could someone let me know the differences in the above and the best way to counter someone who puts VFP down.

All "smart" people know that an "objected-oriented" language that supports inheritance (among other things) is the preferred way to develop applications; up to VB 6.0, VB was not "objected-oriented" and could not support inheritance. VB.NET support inheritance, but IMO, VFP's implementation is more "elegant".

Besides a superior Grid control and TextBox control (due to the picture/format properties), VFP has always been "leading edge"; VB is an also ran.

It's fairly easy to discount VB if you take it a point at a time. Generalizations are always hard to defend; insist on specifics.