>I am a technical manager who's been searching for VFP programmer's now for about 6 month's in the detroit area. I myself have been programming VFP since it's birth. We just cannot find any VFP programmer's.

I have the opposite problem. I am a VFP developer (MVP) who is desperately looking for FoxPro work. The problem I have been experiencing is that no one wants to develop in VFP. Sure, there a fair amount of Fox 2.x work to be found, between year 2000 compliance and maintaining legacy code, but almost no new projects. The bulk of what I'm seeing is "Well, we have this Fox app, and we'd like to convert it to Visual Basic." Somehow, the idea of maintaing Fox apps in VFP is alien to them.
I think some of the others had the right idea. Get a good VB developer and teach them what REAL object orientation is all about. Mind you, they may have a little difficulty adjusting to the syntax, not to mention the lack of the shortcuts (syntax prompts, property popup on objects), but if a lifelong Foxhead like me can learn how to do things the VB way, I'm sure the opposite is true. Like I said, once they see how inheritance and a visual class designer is supposed to work, they may never go back.

(BTW, will VFP 6 use the integrated devleopment environment or have any of the above-mentioned development shortcuts?)

>I feel as if we're heading down the road to no where with VFP, and pretty soon they'll be no turning back.

*** DOOMSAYER ALERT! DOOMSAYER ALERT! ***
I think this is sort of a self-fulfilling prophesy. No one wants to develop in Fox becuase FoxPro is dying, and Fox is dying because no one wants to develop in it. The bottom line is that we in the Fox community have a vested interest in keeping this language alive. It is our duty (yes, I said DUTY) to inform our bosses and potential clients of the power, longevity and continued existience of FoxPro as a database development solution.
Granted, Fox may not be the best solution for a 25,000 station, 100GB of data, world-wide application (EuroTunnel and Desert Storm exceptions noted), but for a small to medium sized business with reasonably small size but intensive data access needs, it can't be beat. That's where we need to be selling it.