Seems to me a lot of this is moot now anyway. But I will make a few comments.

If you were not hearing me in 95/96, then you were not listening. At that point, I was already talking up how important it was to get on board with VB. I was not advocating that people dump VFP in favor of VB, but rather, I was advocating learning the language because in one form or another, it would survive. 7 years later, that is indeed true.

As far as books are concerned, 7 years ago, there was still a decent market. In the latest project we had for 8, I pulled the plug because I could not make the numbers work. It was a last minute thing and the publisher (a major publisher) was a surprised. However, when I explained the factors I considered, they were appreciative. The books represented a good opportunity for us, that is why we did them. It was a great learning experience. If I could not have leveraged the opportunity to the world outside Fox, I would not have done them. As far as articles are concerned, I pretty much gave up Fox-specific stuff 3 years ago.

Those that jumped to Java 5 years ago or so, IMO, made a foolish decision. People were considering it. I told folks they were better staying put because the Java inititive was fragmented and there were no applications or support for the types of applications that Fox developers create. .NET today represents a different story.

In 1997, I asked BG when VFP was going to be marketed to win. The answer I received was not in the affirmative. It was not entirely in the negative either. It was more of the fence ridding we have all become acquainted with.

Bottom line..its a moot point. Those who listened 5-7 years ago that they should be working hard to expand thier skill set (imo, making VB and sql server a central part of that) will be rewarded and hopefully, have already gained some valuable experience. Those that did not are a bit nervous right now. That is why I have said the most important thing MS can do is to ease the path from VFP to .NET.

To those on fence about going to devcon, here is my suggestion to you. Most likely, you have a $2,000 budget and perhaps more. While I think more investments in Fox need to be heavily scrutinized, I do concede that you can always learn something useful. The key is minimize what you pay. Therefore, save you $2K, and spend less than half and go to GLDW in November. You will get most, if not all the core material you are looking for. Then, take the other half of your budget and invest in learning something else. This advice applies regardless of whether you are a contracter or an employee.