Okay, I respect your passion for this.

I guess the thing that makes me sad is there seems to be so much ego and personal animosity in a field that is basically subject to empiricism. Coming from a liberal arts background, I have seen a lot of this kind of stuff in fields that are more subject to unproveable opinion and theory. It generally devolves into petty pissing matches.

I hope those who monitor these threads without knowing the people involved will be able to sort through the personal stuff to glean some insight into the technical and business situation.

I'm sure that at least they are getting that Visual Foxpro is a terrific tool with a very passionate community.

It does not take long in the non-Foxpro community to realize it is not the fastest path to a career in an IT department, it is not going to increase in market-share or favor at MS, but that used by serious developers, for applications entirely controlled by the developer, and often in conjunction with other tools and products - specifically SQL Server back ends - it can be a path to very substantial rewards.


>Charles
>
>JVP routinely mis-positions others in his discourse so he can appear reasonable.
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>The facts are simple.
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>Nobody disagrees that people should look at other tools.
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>Not everybody thinks there should be an immediate mass exodus to dotNET. It is hard to tell what JVP thinks about this as it seems to change.
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>My concern is that at least one VFP newbie has been "burned" (his word) by JVP's polemic attacks. Among other gems, last week JVP likened VFP to a whore or pig. He also announced more than once that the VFP community numbers only a few hundred. This is presented in a gloating fashion that is neither rational nor helpful. The newbie was understandably alarmed and has expressed relief that somebody rebuts the FUD.
>
>If JVP thinks the farm is about to burn down, by all means warn people as the archives will show that I have done more than once, but there is no need to spread petrol and drop lit matches. That is exactly what he is doing by abuse like the above. In that I see no difference from the other two you mention who had the same effect, if not the same motive.
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>Whatever JVP has or has not done in the past, his public and private behaviour is destructive. I only know a little of his complaint to MS about John Koziol who dared to disagree, or his use of false UT Aliases to promote arguments, but I am not impressed by his obscene, threatening private communication with me warning me not to f**ck with him or I'll be sorry.
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>Finally, the signature message at the bottom of this e-mail summarises my overall concern about recent events.
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>Regards
>
>JR