As long as VFP has weak typing, no native compiler, no support for structures, etc., it will always be considered as a mickey-mouse language among those considering a long-term development strategy.
The number of hacks (eg. FLL's) that one has to resort to in an attempts to fully exploit the API's of the OS and third-party products will always be a consideration.
VFP has it's place; but it is severely limited in the grand scheme of things.
People continue to fawn over "Intelli-sense", etc.; support for structures, and the like, was what was really needed.
There's a vocal community of "Old-timers" that seem to be directing the pace and direction of innovation (or lack thereof) in VFP; they are not doing anybody any favors.
Until VFP gets with "the program", it's presence and acceptance will continue to deteriorate.
>>>Doesn't VFP deserve a place in these widely circulated newsletters? Even a single mention would be a dramatic change, Ken. Why pass up on a golden opportunity to give the Ballmer video much wider exposure, before it and the release of VFP7 become old news? Perhaps then you wouldn't have to spend quite so much time personally correcting people's misconceptions about the future of VFP, one at a time.
>>
>>VFP 7.0 and the Steve Ballmer video clip link/information was included in the MSDN Flash newsletter last week (very large distribution list). VFP is showing up on more and more places on the Microsoft site. These kind of things will be ongoing. When someone talks to a perosn who is not aware of the status of VFP, just point them to the
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vfoxpro FoxPro home page as there is plenty of information there that clarifies it and more to come later.
>
>Ken,
>
>Of course I will not hesitate to direct misguided people to the FoxPro home page and other appropriate references, just as you have been doing so diligently yourself. But must we wait until they come to us? How many countless companies are deciding against considering VFP without even giving us a chance to reach them? Surely that is a far greater number than the occasional ones we actually hear about. How convincing can our arguments ever be, in the face of Microsoft's apparent reluctance to put VFP promotional messages in the places where business decision makers look? I don't know who is in charge of Visio marketing, but those guys sure seem to understand how to get their message out to the right audience.
>
>Ken, I was the first one to acknowledge the significance of the most recent VFP blurb you got into MSDN Flash. Now I'm suggesting that you
also get something like that into the altogether different, but no less widely circulated, newsletter put out by The Microsoft Certified Partner Program. Rather than being targeted at developers, this newletter obviously caters to an audience of managers and decision makers who are not so technically minded as the readers of MSDN Flash. It may be spam to me, but this is an extremely important vehicle for reaching an extremely important audience, seriously neglected for years (through no fault of yours).
>
>Now it's
your decision, Ken. Please don't pass up this chance to get VFP some desperately needed exposure. How could you ever hope to get so much mileage out of so little additional effort? I'll bet it took some doing to get that Ballmer video. Why not play it for all it's worth, before the opportunity is wasted? You'll see the results in VFP sales, not because we're being rushed into upgrades we'd eventually have made anyway, but because VFP jobs will be saved, and people will be truly convinced that "the best is yet to come" for VFP.
>
>Mike
