To update this: I don't know for sure that Calvin won the contest, only that he had the first entry to satisfy the problem. Here's what Calvin said: "It turns out my submission was the first entry, and the contest moderator was quite impressed that it was written in Visual FoxPro."(message #905119)
Looking at the blog, it's apparent that he was up against C# and Python programmers who were still asking basic questions when Calvin turned in his response.
A good programmer was able to use a very good language to satisfy a problem very quickly. That much we know. I'm assuming the other programmers were very skilled in the languages they used. And I'll reserve the right to assume that the power of VFP had something to do with it.

>>Just thought I'd pass this URL along:
>>http://www.calvinhsia.com/default.asp?Page=Phone
>>Calvin's solution was in VFP and he won (and it looks like he did it in the shortest amount of time). The demo page is setup as a VFP mtdll called from ASP. This is a great example why, IMHO, VFP has an important place on the web...
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>Am I missing something??? I looked on the blog, and I don't see where Calvin's solution was annointed as the winning solution. And...I see a bunch of other solutions written in C#. In looking at this link:
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>http://blogs.msdn.com/the1/archive/0001/01/01/105884.aspx
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>I did not get a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings re: Calvin's solution.
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>Lets be clear here...Calvin is about as smart as they come. Give him a piece of crap language to use - and he no doubt could work some magic. That said, if Calvin did win this thing, my guess is that it is more of a function of HIM - not the tool. A programming languge is a programming language. The specific problem in this case is not really a data-problem per se - insofar as db-applications are concerned. This same problem could have been solved by a number of languages. The real issue, IMO, is the quality of the programmer.
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>And by the way, I'll be the first one to admit that I would not stand a chance in hell in solving this problem.
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>The "this should show how great VFP is" comments are bit misguided..