>>>One, and this is the most serious disadvantage IMO, is that VFP works only on Windows. This is becoming more serious by the day, now that entire countries are switching to Linux. Note that .NET has the same disadvantage, so frankly, I see no reason to switch to .NET: Invest a lot of time learning a language which I may not be able to use 5 years from now?
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>>I think this is a valid point which I alluded to in my post re the open source movement, the switch to Linux, Apache, PHP, etc by many companies and some governments.
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>Do you have any recommendation, as to multi-platform development tools? I heard there are several alternatives: Delphi/Kylix; Java; PHP; and others.

Hilmar, I am no futurist. I simply dont know. However, Apache is multi-platform, as is PHP. If you are into web development then thats not a bad combination. Plus both of these run on Windows and Linux. For win form apps my choice at the moment is still VFP while keeping an eye on other possible options.



>>>Two, since it isn't really compiled, it may simply not be fast enough for some low-level development. This may usually not be relevant for writing database applications for the business. And I never saw a need for more speed. However, this can be a consideration in some cases.
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>>Well, I assume that VFP developers are using it for database type apps so this has never been an issue to me. If you want low level stuff then you would probably use C/C++.
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>Frankly, it isn't an issue for me either; but it must be considered in some cases. Then again, with C/C++, you will once again have code that is platform-dependent... At the very least, it has to be recompiled for each platform. But that is the typical trade-off, between speed and portability.

I added to my previous reply to you which is that .Net languages are not compiled to machine code either. They are compiled to MSIL code. So in that sense VFP and .Net languages are in a similar boat.