Hi jess,

>>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 The Fox is old, and in IT world, old often gets labeled as not interesting, 'outdated' etc.

>C, Basic is older than fox but not labeled as outdated. And there is now C# which is also considered an evolution of C. Is it labeled as outdated? No.
>If there is Fox# and MS market it well then it will not labeled as outdated. As I have said, Netware is a superb product but Novell has lousy marketing and so, where is Netware now?

I don't know how it works, but if you'd ask any IT manager which happens to know about FoxPro or Dbase they label it outdated purely because it comes from another age. C/C++ is another issue. They're not used by developers trying to make database applications. "Life is too short to programm in C/C++". As for visual basic, yep you've got a point. VB is the strategic general purpose development which is fairly easy to learn. VFP isn't a general purpose language and should not be marketed as such. VFP is about data, and is damn good about that.

>>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.

>We should be alerted enough and see if there are clouds out there which are obvious signs that it will rain. Of all MS dev tools, Fox has the most unclear future. It's in the I.C.U.. The doctors (fox team) are trying their best for it to live at least even longer...

Who cares about the clouds ? If VFP is the best choice now, then use VFP. Nobody can look into the future. It's no use trying to implement a new traject in something as unsure as the .NET version 1 framework. If you do, you'd probably rewrite it in within 2 years with .NET 2 or any of its succesors: 1. because now you're not proficient with .NET and 2. because there will be major enhancements/bugfixes and changes in the .NET framework to be expected.

>>Though one thing is clear for me: in the next 5 years VFP is not 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 ?

>I can't understand you on this one.

OOPS, I forgot the not

>>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.

>>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.

>Assuming VFP gets better integration than .NET languages, will MS market it that way? If so, then good enough, but I doubt it will.

Don't forget, it can never have the marketing VB has. VB is general purpose and the strategic language of MS. That will never change. VFP however is a product specialized on data and will be marketed as such. I think we should give Ken the opportunity to prove himself.

>>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 variety of commercial frameworks?

>It's VFP because I am a VFPer, but try to talk to a proficient delphi or vb programmer, they don't believe you.

No I don't buy that. Talk to someone who know the other languages fairly well as well and you'll come to the conclusion that the points above are strong points for VFP. For example Don't expect Delphi or VB to compile a project in 1 or 2 seconds. Don't expect build in flexible macro substitution and runtime compile features in native compilers. Don't expect MS acces versions to be upwards compatible without a conversion. There are numerous fields where VFP excells.

>>Last but not least: Which developer tool has such a great community and meeting place like the UT here ?

>No doubt about it, it's VFP community. That's why MS is now concentrating on communities. But no matter how strong our community, MS is not changing its mind in handling VFP.

Since I really have faith in the work of Ken I have another opinion. It will not be easy and I won't expect to see a major change because that is impossible. We should realize that VFP is not MSs strategic language, but certainly does have the right to exist.

Walter,