Rod:

I hear what you say about "steady decline" and "use DevCon as my benchmark" and so on. From what I hear, the official DevCon is poor value for money. There are quite a few other Fox conferences nowadays too. People vote with their feet and choose other Fox conference venues. As to the validity of conferences as a "bench mark", I have been developing in FPD/FPW/VFP since about 1989. I went to my first Devcon last week in Frankfurt and it was great. The enthusiasm there was incredible. So how can you reconcile your benchmark with the fact that a comitted and long term Fox developer (myself) has only just attended his first Devcon?

Also, when you start talking about declining numbers and so forth, if we ignore the economy and numerous other somewhat obvious factors, look at the overall changes in software development. The time you refer to, circa 1995 (and earlier), many developers used Foxpro (all flavours) as their main development tool to do almost everything. There was a demand for books and magazines to show Fox developers how to get their favourite tool to do everything they needed it to. Then, the nature of desktop application development changes. For example, we get more robust OLE automation. So Fox people start using Word/Excell in their applications. So these Foxers want to know more about automation and some Word basic and then some VBA. Client server development has taken a hold too, so they start using SQL back-ends and they need to know more about SQL server and T-SQL and P-SQL. Then, the internet starts getting really big after 1995 and Foxers find their clients want internet apps. So Foxers start learning HTML, and ASP and VB script and Javascript. Suddenly, the Foxer is now not just exposed to Fox as their only development tool but possibly three or four other technologies and languages, still with Fox at the core.

So, these Foxers know that to survive they need to have good skills in these additional tools so when they invest in training and conferences and magazines and books, they start spending on other non-Fox stuff.

It is obvious why overall interest may appear to be down. Your average Fox developer today is not the same "animal" (pardon the pun) as in the early to mid 1990's. He has to spread himself around an awful lot more and be proficient at many more things.

This scenario does not indicate the decline of Fox at all. It just highlights the fact that the average Fox developer is now much more multi-skilled than he was and that other tools have become more important than they were for everyday use in Fox (and other) applications.

I think you will have to re-assess the metrics you utilise to measure "decline". With the greatest of respect, I personally feel you are off the mark on this occasion. Your rhetoric appears to emanate from the same place as JVP's.

Like it or not, Fox is soon at V8 with V9 in the pipeline. This looks pretty good to me and plenty of others too.

Best