Sorry for the response delay: Busy, busy, busy....

>I understand you cannot allow yourself to drift far from the company "line". MS is lucky to have you!

Ow, that hurt. Dude, you have no idea how far I'll drift from the company line if I think it helps our community. Before we decided to open up to our customers I used to get reamed in closed-door sessions for doing just that.

As to the rest: Do you remember when MS and Fox Software "merged" in June 2002? A lot of the Fox faithful went on suicide watch because they were certain that MS would rip the good tech bits out of Fox and then kill the product. That didn't happen.

What did happen was 7 (and soon 8) new versions of the product over a period of 12 years.

Allow me to be crass and brutally honest (SET SOAPBOX ON):

I guess some expected Fox to become a premiere tool of the company when it was acquired and to be ballyhooed as such but that didn't happen.

Take a step back: We've had 12 years of empirical evidence that my employer likes to take a single tool in a given area and market it all get out. For example, when was the last time you saw marketing for Microsoft Works?

I was an MVP for several years before becoming a Borg. I used to kvetch and moan on the same issues during that time (anytime before April 2001). It's all archived here - look up my posts from that period.

But reality is reality. We're not doing anything differently than has always been done; in fact, I could make a good argument that we're far more customer-driven than we ever have been insofar as product features and responsiveness to bug reports.

You can go forth into the world and kick-butt with VFP. You just can't point to a full-page ad in Computerworld showing MS pushing it. And you haven't since (likely) 1995 and you likely won't ever.

Internally, we are constantly educating our peers on the product. I can't count the number of times I (or others) have extolled the virtues of VFP to other MS employees. I also can't count the number of times Ken Levy has gone ape when hearing that an MS employee has said something dismissive or inaccurate about VFP and he sends corrective email.

Back to paying bills and living life as a developer: The best analogy I can draw is to look at the history of draftsmen and CAD. When I was a kid I saw ads for learning to be a draftsman left and right. A great career. Then AutoCAD and other tools started to proliferate and the whole draftsman career track started to decline. Sure, expert draftsmen kept their jobs but the market was pressured by new ideas and new technology. Those that whined about the decline of the profession while staying in that profession found themselves in an increasingly difficult situation. Those that abstracted their careers and learned that designing is designing regardless of the tool learned the new tools and moved on.

If you have clientele that categorically won't allow you to use VFP, then use that as a learning opportunity and not as a basis to rant at MS. If the situation demands a different tool, well then, apply a new tool and be smart enough to do it on someone else's dime - setting the appropriate cost and time expectations. If not, then why do you need the marketing anyway if they'll accept a VFP solution?

SET SOAPBOX OFF:

Please believe me when I say I understand your situation. I survived from 1986 through 2001 as a Fox developer so I know firsthand. But I cannot support the idea that all is dependent on our marketing of VFP - at some point all of us should learn new things.

>But VFP is just a software program - it has no emotions - no bills to pay - and [therefore] cannot be slighted.
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>People are "slighted". People who purchase MSDN, purchase VFP, people that buy SQL to hook up to VFP front/middle ware, people who purchase, develop and support VFP projects are the ones being slighted - those people are Microsoft customers. Not some object filled with 1's and 0's on a CD!!!
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>MS played the same "hope to grow the core product" with VB. VB is dead and MS stock is at 15 year old values. Maybe - if Microsoft showed the world that it's core concern are her customers, and not some marketing scheme that hopes by starving bob, it will feed bill - maybe things would turn around! The stock in in a slump - and from my ignorant 10 watt POV, Microsoft's name doesn't seem to have the same warm fuzzy feeling it used to have!
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>Not paying attention to detail is the reason, just maybe, for news items like "flaws in IE security", refusals to sell by Google, plumeting stock value and customer disatifaction.
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>All we ask is on your Product Page say "Visual FoxPro" - no link required - you don't have to hire an intern to answer emails - or link it to the home page. But [maybe] MS needs to put customers first. Right now, I get the sense that Microsoft is "penny rich, but dollar poor" and [maybe] more and more friendless by the day!
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>Thanks for the response!
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>>Terry, it's a decision to support what's core to the company. It's nothing personal and no slight is intended for VFP but if the market for VS.Net were to die tomorrow, MS would be far more hurt than if VFP died tomorrow.
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>>I can't go further into it but maybe Ken can explain this better.
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>>>Its always a struggle to keep things in balance and the perpestive honest. Why is MS allowing this fight to go on within it's "umbrella" of developers. It's not doing any of us any good! There are lots of SQL systems out there with VFP as a front/middle ware service. Redmond is letting us all down by not giving the tool that many of us on this board make a living with (and sell SQL licenses with), and; by not allowing VFP a fair (even minimal would be okay) billing on their product board!
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>>>The .NET guys calling out VFP guys, and vise versa. Why
>>>>Also true. Terry, you're preaching to the choir. VFP is a great tool in a lot of environments.
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>>>>>>I would have to admit that, for sure. .Net is the development umbrella for a host of MS tools. There are so many things you can do with .Net and so many areas that the whole .Net concept can evolve into.
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>>>>>There are also a lot of things that cannot be done with .NET and a lot of markets where .NET is unsuitable.