>Hi George;
>
>Very well put and very nice to hear a voice of reason and logical thinking with all of the emotionally charged noise that has been recently bantered about on this forum concerning the future of VFP, MS marketing, VFP "bugs", and some rather inappropriate personal attacks.
>
>I have been programming since 1989, (mostly xbase, Clipper, FPW and VFP), but have only been active on UT for about a year now. I have gained more in the last year that the previous 10 with the wealth of resources available here. You and UT have helped me many times over with the FAQ's, downloads, and just lurking around picking up tidbits from other posts.
>
>I am always very skeptical when I see *** VFP BUG *** shouted out at every turn when something does not work the way that the programmer thinks that it should. I have been programming long enough to know that about 99% of the time when my code does not work like I thought it should, it is normally something in my code causing the problem or encountering a situation that I had not thought of. No tool is 100% bug free, but IMO, VFP is one of the more powerful, and bug free tools out there. It is the arrogant or inexperienced programmer who immediately concludes that it is a BUG as soon as something does not work exactly like they expected it to. I have yet to find anything in VFP, bug or otherwise, that has prevented me from getting the job done. It sometimes may require a work around or a change in my original logic but I have never been left without a solution (especially with the UT resources to draw from).
>
>I use VB and VFP for applications. VFP is my preferred tool for data intensive apps and as a client for SQL Server, but I also find that VFP is often shunned by the IT departments of many companies that I deal with. Much is due to misinformation, lack of understanding of what they really want or need and the desire of the IT managers to be up to date with the latest buzz words being touted as the cutting edge technology, even if it is not the best fit for the application. I don't expect VFP to be around forever, but I will continue to use it as long as it provides the best solution for the task at hand. Do I wish that it was more widely accepted in IT circles? Absolutely Yes. Would more marketing and IT education help? Maybe. The best that I can do is produce the best, most stable application that solves the problems it is designed to solve and provide value and service to my customers.
>
>Thank you for the help that you have unselfishly given to me and to the VFP community.
>
Elmer,

As I've said before, it's my pleasure. There were a number of people would did the same for me back in the early 1980s and each, when I asked how I could repay them, told me to do the same for others.

My Discrete Mathematics professor (Dr. Nancy Zumoff, Kennesaw State University) once told us that, "Computer science is the most difficult of all the exact sciences." Given that it's at the least "right up there", quality peer support is very important.