>But that's the thing what does a guy should do when the money is tight and he's alone to cover it all.
>
>I'm sure that the description I gave you applies to many Fox developers.

I'm in the same boat as you (I pay all the bills).

There are still clients out there that only care that the software "works well" (and are not VB or C "bigots").

(IMO) For "small shops", I still think one can be more productive (and therefore more competitive) using VFP. It still takes longer to develop "data centric" apps in VB, C, .NET, Delphi. At the same time, I can still use C or other DLLs to extend my apps.

Even some of my customers who were VB bigots were won over because the alternatives weren't that appealing.

As long as there's still a market for "good" applications where the client doesn't particularly care what it is written in, I think you should continue using VFP (even if this is the last release, and regardless of MS shoddy marketing, etc).

If you're dependent on clients that think you should go with what's in "vogue", then chuck VFP and go with ... what ? ... .NET ?

Frankly, with MS's arrogance, punitive licensing, sloppy QA (Slammer, IIS holes, etc), resistance to open source, over pricing, and other questionable tactics, I think it's worth keeping Linux in mind. The adoption of open source by a number of countries and their public rejection of "free" MS licenses is an indication of things to come.

So, the bottom line is that I still think it is possible to develop appealing apps in the language of one's choice. It might be a bit more difficult going in "cold"; that's why it's always nice to have a "portfolio" that one can demo to a prospect. A lot easier than trying to convince one about the merits of VFP vs VB vs whatever (assuming the question even comes up). Anyway, VFP is written in MFC ... if you want to play at that game.