Allan,
>Interestingly, at the start of the presentation, the speaker from MS was illustrating the history of programming over the last 30 or so years. On his timeline flowchart was almost every programming language I'd ever heard of - and more. You know, PowerBuilder, Delphi, Visual Basic, Python, Java, Cobol, Pearl, et al.
Did they mention dBase? If not, the history was quite incomplete. I wonder if this was an official MS presentation (provided by HQ) or was something that regional office put together. At some of the .NET Launch events, the local people are running the show and making up their own content -- here in Houston they even played some semi-cool spoof promo videos the local office put together.
It could be that the person who wrote that stuff isn't even old enough to remember dBase and look-alikes as part of the history. :-)
>Nary a mention of VFP. Even when the speaker was doing the marketing bit on the MSDN Subscriptions - going into great detail to explain what was included with each type of subscription - no mention of VFP.
On a positive note, you will see Visual FoxPro properly mentioned on the back cover of the VS .NET box in the listing of what you get with MSDN.
>I realize that this was a .NET event - however, it was par for the course that even when programming languages other than the .NET languages were alluded to in the presentation, VFP was not. And I was taken aback by the fact that every other tool included in the MSDN Subscritpions was listed - except for VFP.
You're right. It was a .NET event and should not be expected to mention VFP. In fact, from the perspective of .NET being the be-all and end-all of software development -- the crowning achievement that trumps all of those prior development tools that they listed -- it would have been bad to see VFP listed there as being replaced by .NET.
>VFP now appears to be nothing more than an afterthought ...
It's a bit more than that for people who use it, of course, but in Microsoft's overall marketing efforts, it's a small speck.
