Thomas,

>I do not see how anyone can give you a guarantee of what products will or will not be on the market by forecasting the future of development tools. This sounds like the “psycho hot line” to me!

Hm, yeah, I agree...I think the fixation on the far future is more debilitating than helpful...tends to breed paralysis, since nothing in the future can be assured!

>I do not know how Microsoft works but other major corporation’s sales forces work like this: The sales person sits down with the sales manager before the beginning of the year (fiscal or otherwise) and is given a territory and quota to sell. Anything over quota is worthy of a bonus. Sales persons have been known to sell his/her mothers soul to meet or exceed quota. Selling your mothers soul more than once gets you promoted quickly. Sales types that do not make quota go on to sell other things – pots and pans or whatever. It is all the same to a sales type. Truth and reality do not enter into the question.

I am not sure if they talked to a sales type or support type. In any case, I suppose the saleman angle is going to rear its ugly head.

>We have the same and more problems of this type where I work. We have contracts with Microsoft for technical assistance, and use Visual Studio 6.0. I am not allowed to use Visual FoxPro at my place of employment even though I was hired for my background with VFP. We have something like 50 servers and 80 developers. With VFP “Out of the box”, I see less chance than ever before to be allowed to use it as a development tool. I am fighting city hall and paying the price for it – I will not win. Microsoft has told the company the same things about VFP – and it is not used.

I feel for you...it seems that even rational , demonstrable arguments for VFP are met with the attitude of "well, you are just a VFP zealot" and "VFP is dead...give it up already" and "why are you afraid to learn a new tool"...none of which are even remotely accurate.

>If I could I would convince my company to upgrade to Visual FoxPro 7.0. I know they will not. Therefore, there will be 80 less upgrades for VFP from my company.
>
>Thank God there is more to life than software development. Well, thank God that not all developers have anything to do but be involved with software. There is more to life than what this field has to offer!

And I am thankful you have that healthy attitude! I don't have to feel so sorry for your VFP struggle at work! *smile* Keep up the good fight, and keep on enjoying life outside the cubicle box!

JoeK