>Do you believe that Foxpro is the only language capable of strong data manipulation? Or that SQL Server does not handle data well? I love Foxpro, but I could not in all honesty recommend that someone just starting out use it as their primary tool. Nor would I recommend someone move from another visual language to it. That is not the future. Just because JVP takes a lot of heat for not having practical data to back up his claims doesn't necessarily mean he's that far off base. Our own shop is looking to move to another technolody in the next couple years. I will use Foxpro as long as it is practical for me, but I'm also starting to learn VB.Net and ASP.Net. Just in case, you know...

Yes my expirince show this.
It is more comfortable to teach programmers with VFP for data manimulation instead of to do this with more powerful and expensive SQLServer.

If future is web based systems may be JVP will be right. But how much time will need all firms to move to web-based system, if they always observe problems with hacking and shutdown web-servers.
I expext that next 5 years will be still valuable to learn VFP.
All modules in our ERP is done with VFP and next 5 years I do not intend to rewrite them in other language, but intend to upgrade to VFP9.0 :-)
I also mention that I have teams which work with VB.Net, C# and ASP.Net. It is worth to made this additional investment in .Net.
Especialy for web projects.
My preference is ASP.Net & C#