>sustainable and contemporary platform = Visual Studio .NET, Java, PHP, Python, SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, etc.....
>sustainable and contemporary platform <> Visual FoxPro

Let's hear the arguments supporting this. Specifically, your arguments should answer for me these questions:

1. What specifically makes VS.NET contemporary while VFP 8.0 is not?

2. What makes you think VS.NET, still in version 1 land, is sustainable while VFP 8.0 is not?

3. How can any new platform (such as the mentioned .NET) be regarded as sustainable?

The answer to that question will be insightful, as I'm sure the examples of COM, COM+ and Windows DNA remind us that the "contemporary and sustainable" platforms of 3 years ago are gone which suggests to me that they were never sustainable platforms to begin with. Look at CoDe in 2000 and in one magazine you'll find articles on COM+ events and DNA patterns. At the time we were told those platforms are the sustainable ones, not VFP. Since then there have been two new versions of VFP while COM and DNA have been superceded by a platform for both technical and competitive reasons.

4. Why do you think that databases like SQL Server and Oracle are good examples of "contemporary" platforms, given that all the design goals of a server based data system are also acheived by securing and managing data in any format on a server accessible by Web Services, a technology at the fore front of another platform in your contemporary platform list?

It seems as if the new technology you mentioned obsoletes and supercedes the other one on a technical level, then to claim that they are both contemporary is confusing.

If your arguments are based around the line "We're talking about perception, not reality", then don't bother discussing. To equate status-quo and pop-culture with the word contemporary (or sustainable for that matter) is about as productive as discussing the brilliance of the N'Sync discography with someone who writes the check at a record company. If your intention is to simply repeat bandwagon type arguments coming from the platform vendor's themselves then I think you've utterly failed to grasp what it is that Mike Yearwood found depressing about the situation.