>>Hi jess,

>>If I try to be open minded, I see that each day more tools get onto the market. Nowerdays more and more specialized software gets developped. Many of us see VFP as a general purpose tool, but it isn't. VFP is about data and munging data. It's natural that VFP loses some market share because VFP is simply not always the right tool for the job. Before MS access was released a lot of 'developers' used VFP to make simple entryforms and reports. MS access is a way better tool to do this than VFP, because of the ease of use. VFP was also used for large enterprises for information systems. Today there are good ERP and CRM solutions and they're getting cheaper each day. So yes, VFP is loosing marketshare, no doubt. I think people are wrong when saying that VFP lost its marketshare to VB or VB.NET. This is only a small part if you'd ask me.

>Lousy marketing was the culprit. We wanted to buy television but MS gave us $ which can only buy a bottle of vinegar.

Blaming it all on the marketing is way too easy I think. Sure, MS could have done more, but I also wonder if this would have made a big difference. The Fox is old, and in IT world, old often gets labeled as not interesting, 'outdated' etc.

>After VFP 8, can we still see another one...WAIT AND SEE and/or uncertain right? But .NET languages will still be there after version 2 or 3 or 4 and that's certain.

I don't buy that. I still have to see that .NET 2 or 3 will arive or it will be transformed into another new development environment with even better promises. How compatible will .NET be with it successors ? To me the future of VFP is just as unclear as any development environment. Though one thing is clear for me: in the next 5 years VFP is going to be dead. Why ? There are simply to many application running on FOX. Do you have any idea how much effort it will take to convert all existing VFP application into another development environment ?

>Look at what happened with VFP MAC, they released version 3.0 but afterwards no more because no more demand. The decline of VFP marketshare is saying the same message?

I don't think so. the FOX was about DOS and Windows, not the MAC. I think you can't draw any conclusions from that.

>And so it needs miracle for it to bounce back and it will not happen if MS is not interested on it at all. Making VFP to be the front end of SQL Server is another puzzle to me. Can the VFP Team surpass how integrated SQL Server with .NET is?

AFAIK, future versions will get a better SQL-server integration than VFP 7. How it will compare to .NET I don't know, but I'm sure the VFP team won't get away with a half backed solution. So I guess it will be done properly.

>>VFP, will always be the most suited tools for a lot of applications when doing a lot of data munging. IOW, VFP has the right to exists, because for the most applications I work on, it is simply the right tool.
>
>Simply because you get to know VFP first other than other tools. VBers, Delphiers, and/or PBers shout the same claim.

Can you point out a development language that has such strong OOP capability. Not only in programming, but also in visual aspects ? Can you point out a development environment that compiles a 2 Meg application in about 1 or two seconds. Which environment has the maximum control about data ? Which one has the richest DML ? Which one has the best runtime evaluation (macro substition) and compile (programs and database) in runtime ? Which one is easy to install and has virtual no problems with different versions or dependencies ? Which language has such a rich viriaty of commercial frameworks ? Last but not least: Which developer tool has such a great community and meeting place like the UT here ?

The fact is, that we're spoiled on a number of areas and as a result of that we look at areas that are less perfect and are done better in other developer tools. If the average VFP developer would migrate to any development environment, he'd soon see that an awfull lot of things were not that bad in VFP.

Walter,