Martin;

We all have opinions on this subject and I have expressed mine more than once. Let me say that I was the first person to purchase Visual FoxPro 3.0 in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to my sources of information. I had used the Beta version and loved it! When I held VFP 3.0 in my hands I promised myself to not go back to older versions and learn the product as best I could.

I attended many training courses on VFP and consider it to be the reason I was able to leave electronic engineering and enter programming. I have been programming for more than twenty years with a number of different tools. VFP has allowed me to remain in Silicon Valley where it is very expensive to live and raise my family. My son just graduated from college and our daughter has two years to go.

Today I have to use Visual Interdev 6.0 as that is our corporate standard but I still use VFP for all my personal consulting work. Some of my more then 50 VFP clients include:

1. University of California
2. Sony Corporation
3. NEC
4. California Water Department

It is easy to look back at each software version and think, “if only…”. Well, the reality is when there is a problem we find the solution. We call the solution a “bandage” or “jumping through a hoop”. The real solution may take a new version or a few service packs until it becomes implemented. No one software tool can be all things to all people. No software is "anomoly free".

Personally, I think that without VFP in my life my wife and I would not have just celebrated our 37th Wedding Anniversary! By the way my wife Enriqueta (Katy) is from Peru.

I am off for a weekend of flamenco in San Francisco, to enjoy my life. Flamenco guitar is my “other life”! As for programming - ¡Que Pena! :)

Tom