>> No, I'd find out why they wanted to be a programmer though. IMHO the
>> golden age of programming draws to a close, our tools will continue to
>> get smarter and smarter till they are smarter than we are.

I would disagree with that. I think that the golden age for developers is yet to come. At the same time however, things will be much more organized for developers. I doubt that one will be able to go on being a developer forever without having some kind of engineering background (code of ethics, licensing, and all that nice stuff...). In a word: I simply think this profession will grow up.

I also do not think that people will be able to build small business applications forever and ever. I think the market for that will be saturated eventually. There will always be some need, but as off-the-shelf apps get better and more flexible, this market will shrink.

At the same time, there will be new markets. Devices for instance. Or very specialized applications. The sheer number of things that will need very sophisticated software to run in the future is hard to imagine. Some think that toasters, fridges, and picture frames driven by software are hard to comprehend, but how about those little chips that marketers now start to embedd in every product? Every consumer product, from cars to tooth paste, will have chips that can tell producers when a product got purchases, used, and disposed of. Can you imagine what this will mean for development? I predict that software needs will explode.

You might say that this is far in the future. Not true. Some of this stuff is being tested today. But there are more short-term examples as well, such as cell phones, cameras, wrist watches, and similar devices, all of which become more and more powerful. Does anybody doubt that a phone can be built into a wrist-watch in the near future? At this point, the question is whether or not it will have an integrated camera...

Will any of this be developed in VFP? Well... you tell me. I wouldn't think so. Will this stuff be developed in .NET? Absolutely! At least in the short term. 10 years from now I would expect the platform to have evolved almost beyond recognition. But I would certainly expect to see some of the .NET traces even then.

Of course there is one very good point in your message: Some of these techniques will out-grow the current population of developers. And I think this is what this entire thread is all about: Survival of the most knowledgeable. Especially xBase languages traditionally have a developer base that doesn't have a programming background, but a business background instead (many xBase developers really became developers by accident). Now I am not saying that those people will not be part of the future development landscape. But they will have to evolve with the market.

Basically, this is all business as usual: Evolve or die. But of course we are evolving at the speed of software, which is fascinating at times (and dreadful if you find yourself slightly behind...)

Markus