>Terry -
>
>Actually the situation I am involved in is quite fascinating. Although it is not feasible to describe the entire situation here, an interesting facet is a company that is considering doing a full rewrite of a mission-critical VFP application (in another technology) and one of the MAIN reasons given for doing so (a VERY extensive/expensive project) is the fear (justified??) that "good" VFP developers cannot be found and/or would be very expensive compared to Java, C++, .NET, etc. developers.

Hi Alex,
because I have 4 teams(VFP, VB, C# & web) I have clear view on the situation in which this company falls.
I pay twice less to other programmers than VFP one. But in reality most of the in-house work is done by VFP programmers.
Why?
- database IS done in VB or C take 3-4 more time to be developed. We made the same project with VB, C and VFP using different technologies. VFP is 3 times faster than VB/ADO and 8 times fater than C++/odbc.
If this firm will develop client-server application the project cost will be lower if they use VFP programmers it doesn't matter that they will be twice expensive.
If they can aford telecommuting may be they will be able to find many experienced VFP programmers.

But looking at my VFP team appears that every project require three classes programmers - 10-20% highly experienced, 40-50% with average experience and 40-50% junior programmers. In every VFP project there are a lot of tasks like LookUp forms, reports, etc. which could be done from junior programmers according pattern provided by experience programmer.
HTH