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>With all due respect, Jim's post must carry the most weight. The guy is running what is arguably the biggest VFP distributership. VFP appears to be very much alive and kicking!
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Hello John.

>Believe it or not - I would have to agree with you.

Well, the year is still young :)


>That said, you do need to keep Jim's comments in perspective. I don't doubt he is selling boxes of VFP. I have long said that if you are an employee - you don't shoulder as much technology risk as an independent. If you are an independent consultant - I don't the story is all that rosey and I don't think Jim's take on things applies all that much.

As an ISD with systems at several thousand end-users I concur with Jim that individuals and small business end-users dont care what the app is written in. They want a solution thats easy, fast, low cost, low maintenance. VFP provides that. Although not necessarily the only option in this field it works very well in many cases.


>Also, the purchase of VFP 7 licenses in no way reflects that new/significant development is going on. For many I would bet - VFP 6 apps are being recompiled under 7 as-is. The driving force behind upgrades may be soley for support concerns.

These are assumptions you make. I am building new systems all the time, several a year in fact. I could as easily draw the conclusion that other ISD's are also building new apps. Jim's post also implies as much.


>And, when compared to other tools - there is no way VFP 7/8 boxes come close to the amount of .NET/SQL Server licenses sold.

But no one said that. What Jim did say is that VFP sales as a percentage of all MS dev tools sales is much higher than people think.


>The success of Jim's business is not tied to the amount of new development. The same cannot be said for independent software developers. Their success OTOH - is almost entirely dependent on new development. If you are an ISD who is focused on Fox - your prospects are much more limited than in other environments.

Well, Jim's post did not quite paint that picture imo. He clearly states that he is "amazed at the number of small shops with very profitable niche market applications out there."

Also, his business is tied, at least to some degree, to the sales of VFP and VFP add-ons. Thats one of the very business' he appears to be in and doing very well apparently.

I think a very important distinct that developers need to make is where they are looking for work. If its in a large company then you are going to have to get on board whatever boat IBM/Intel/MS/Oracle/et al are pushing. If otoh you are looking at smaller companies, dev shops, or independant software development then VFP is an absolutely valid and realistic option.


>Yes - the market as a whole is down - but the market for VFP-based solutions was in a decline when others had the reverse trend.

There is a difference between a decline in the number of users of a dev tool and whether that dev tool is still a valid and realistic option for developers as per my comment above. There is simply no way that MS would continue to develop new versions, SP's, MSDN website enhancements, etc etc if there was no market. Jim's post clearly shows that there is a worthwhile VFP market out there, including in government departments, some large organizations, and certainly in smaller business'.


Releated topic - What I am also very surprised by is the following posts by respected developers, including MVP's, that seem to not have generated any significant response. Particularly the apparently poor performance of winforms and the apparent forthcoming compatiblity issue for current VS.Net winforms:

Mario Montoya: Message #861017

Rick Strahl: Message #856716

Cetin Basoz: Message #861341