Stuart,

From the instant that we are born we are "dying" if you choose to look at it that way. Foxpro is dying or dead has been shouted from the rooftops since the early '90s, yet it still is being developed and new versions are being introduced much to the dismay of the doomsayers (clairvoiant they are not). Is it the strategic focus of Microsoft? Absolutely not. Is it irrelevent or a dead software development technology? Definitely not. There are still many critical applications being managed by fox code and still many more opportunities for the Fox and those who are experienced and creative enough to see and bring them to life. While you will always hear Foxpro is dead or dying, if it solves a business need and you can leverage it to make a living, then it is not dead. Will it be around forever? Face it, nothing lasts forever. But Foxpro has survived for many, many years of neglected marketing, thousands of doomsayers preaching that it is dead or dying, thousands of incompetant hacks spewing out dreadful/crappy applications (contributing to the bad rap that Foxpro has received), clueless IT managers who have prejudices based on the negative forces that have plagued Foxpro from the beginning, and technology trends moving in another direction. Any one of these negative forces could and has killed many lesser development tools.

There are very few applications that cannot be written in VFP. Is it the right tool for every job? Absolutely not. Should you be looking at and learning other technology? If you plan to to continue a career and survive in the IT world, definitely YES. Should VFP be discarded and left behind? I don't think so, at least not for now or the near future. For now and for several years to come, with the right skills and mind set, with VFP you can produce as robust and sexy application as can be developed with any other tool out there. Only when technology moves to the point where VFP cannot run on the newest platform out there will VFP be left behind. At that point, thousands if not millions of businesses will be screaming foul and will hang on the outdated technology for many years because they will have many other critical applications (besides those written in Foxpro) that no longer work with the latest and greatest technology. From that point forward IMO, there will be more jobs than you can imagine for experienced Foxpro developers who have skills required to convert the thousands of critical foxpro based systems.

VFP rocks!!

Just my $0.02