Kevin,

>>Based on this, is it then reasonable to assume you disagree with the original statement that we'll all still be discussing the pending death of VFP long after .NET becomes .HISTORY?

No, it is reasonable to assume that every time you claim special acuity for things like "noticing that VFP is marginalized", it carries a certain message about your peers.

FYI I've argued this point for over a decade- first of all with Winchell who eventually stated publicly in 1995 that MS was deliberately marginalizing FP, then with Sigler once VFP was released. I left VFP in disgust in 1997 when I thought MS's intentions were both apparent and relevant.

I still think they are apparent, but these days I happen to believe they are a lot less relevant.

You might be surprised to hear some of the other names who were also debating this point over the last decade. I think you don't give the community intellect enough credit.

Re the future: at a time when uber-geeks are starting to regard Google as their operating system, everything we regard as important in "development" may well be destined for the scrap heap. Give me small speech-enabled devices, a way to cast readable pages without carrying a screen and a simple cellphone-style firmware OS like those we used in computers in the 1980s, and I will gladly abandon my PC along with all concerns about Longhorn and the like. As will millions like me. IMHO that is a ".HISTORY" that tools like VFP, Cobol and VB will find easier to traverse- because there is already a huge legacy of proven code that is cheaper to maintain than to redo.