Hi Thomas,

>The definition of niche is whatever you like it to be. If you want to be employed in the San Francisco Bay Area as a VFP programmer your chances are slim or non-existent. You do what you must to survive.

I'm not sure what you trying to say, but IMO an terrible economical situation does not make a programming language it into a niche market. Finding a programming Job these days is not easy (not even in Holland, though the situation here does not seem to be as bad as in the US) regardless if you're a VFP programmer or not.

Personally as an independed programmer I don't have too many worries right now, I'm the owner of a few software products which are licensed and am currently working on a project for fertility centres world wide. However, if for some reason this project ends, I certainly will be having trouble to find new VFP work. I too have a family to support (married with 2 children), so I must find a new job if I'm out of work rather quickly. However, I'm convinced that I'll find a new job when i need one. I'm well educated and experienced in various fields, so this should not be a problem at all. The question I'm going to ask myself is: will I leave the IT when it comes this far? I've got to recognize that the past 10 years have been hardworking and sometimes stressfull. When I reach the age of 40 (I'm only 32 now), I might have burned out in programming so, I'm starting to work on doing something else by the time I reach that age.

>We just had a job offering for Southern California for VFP programmers – at $28 an hour or about one half what it takes to support a family. That may mean nothing to you but it has great meaning to an industry that two years ago was paging twice the amount now offered amount! By the way the jobs offered demand XML skills, etc.

I guess it highly depends on where you live. $28 an hour certain seems not much if you're an independed consultant, but when calculating $28 x 40 h/w x 4 weeks a month = $4480 it seems a well payed job in our part of the world.

>Every area of the world is different. I have attempted to discuss my area and my reality.

I recognize things are bad in your area. However, I've got to note that most americans do think america is the whole world while they host only about 1/20th of the worlds population. While western europe geographically is a lot smaller, it has about the same population. Esspecially when talking about VFP's health things are only based on the US & Canada while IMO VFP more popular in Europe than it is in your part of the world (Or else it would not be translated in to various european languages like German for example)

Walter,