I realize that I could be right, you could be right and many other replies to those same kinds of threads could also be right.

Doing business is a highly complex process. Long live VFP!

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>>There's probably someone at MS that evaluated that the hours that would have to be invested to do it would'nt be a good return on investment. So they probably thought "Nobody really cares about that stuff anyway and for those who did. Poor them." which translates better in the politically correct answer that you gave me.
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>I have no idea why MS recommends using unmanaged C++...I only know that they do.
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>>So you're saying that MS makes VFP to make money. Would'nt they make more money with more agressive marketing?
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>Not necessarily. GM tried a huge marketing blitz on Oldsmobile before they decided to kill the line.
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>>I think you have something interesting here. 3M have thousands of products. So it's more understandable that they can't put as much energy to promote all their products. MS does'nt have as much product. and I'm sure that the complexities of producing stuff is not what it is at 3M.
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>You're right...the complexities are more complicated. So, lets trim things down to my division alone. Our manufacturing process is very similar to that of MS...that is, we produce software. We have to create packaging, documentation, CDs, etc. We have products that get less marketing than others.
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>>I'm sure that at 3M there are many more steps involved. Starting from the fabrication of a new product to its release.
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>>>>This makes no sense. I said it before. It makes no sense that a company builds a wonderful development environment but makes no effort to really sell it. Can anybody explain this?
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>>No explanation here?
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>There *are* efforts to sell it. Let's look at it this way... The VFP does not control their budget. They're told "Here's how much you can spend on marketing". One way to get more money is to continue to show the executives what a great product it is and how is stays technically relevant. Then, the executives will allocate more money to it. Alex stated in another thread here that VFP visibility inside MS is higher than it's ever been and he's right. When I was there in April, *MANY* people commented on VFP and the community. We may not get the marketing we want, but we are the envy of many other teams.