In my opinion it is a major blunder. Check out the programming indices and read between the lines. VFP is dying on the vine. Check out the attendance rates to Devcons, VFP threads, and VFP jobs in general out there. Read ads in Dallas, Houston, Denver etc... jobs for all kinds of C++, C#, or SQL developer exist. No VFP anywhere. 4 years ago I had 6 interviews at 6 different companies ( I was practicing ) in 1 month and saw ads everywhere. Economy boom or bust there is still a need for people and new developement goes on somewhere, just not in VFP land.

We have a 15 year old fat-client, very complex application. Started in 2.6 and has matured to 7. Two years ago we were behind VFP and we were adamant at staying with it in the face of the .NET release. At Devcon 2000 we were po'ed that they even pitched .NET to the crowd ( how dare they? we thought ). 5 months ago as if on cue, all of the developers here made the desire to stop all development/production in VFP known to management. They told us great, we were about the tell you guys to shift anyway. The market is driving people to .NET developed software and it is time to get on the train or be left at the station ( I love that euphemism ). Our last build we be released in June. We are shifting totally to .NET and scapping every line of VFP code. No design or anything from VFP moves forward. Two reasons: 1) Our clients demand it. IT people that control budgets want to here buzzwords like VC++, C#, SQL Server etc... IT guys hate VFP. Our client list is made up of Fortune 500 companies down to the next door family business and we can't find one that likes VFP. It got to the point we were hiding in what language our platform was written. Fact of the matter, people that control the money in our industry don't want fox and we can't sell it because it hasn't moved up in technology, only looks and IDE stuff. 2) All the Intellisense, pretty UI stuff, "interfaces" into technology it can't work with natively, and patches in the world doesn't substitute for some much needed work on the database engine and codebase.

Instead of improving the car they just repainted it, put in a new stereo, and gave it a pine tree freshener to hang on the rear-view mirror. Does Edsel come to mind? I am glad my company has seen the light. If nothing else I will be highly marketable in 2 years or so and not behind the curve. Much more than a VFP developer will be.

This is my opinion. I am sure this will generate some fall-out. I do what I need to to make a living and that need is moving to .NET.

Sorry, sometimes the truth is brutal.

MLW