>And who will really fight on this. Those protecting and caring for the small shops. This looks like a minority over here on the UT. So either it's the majority here is working with BIG businesses or are tired of working with small shops and would like DBF to disappear hoping to get too in the big $$$ train.
>
Hi Denis,

Consider the possibility that the small shops don't need Microsoft to tout VFP for them.

It's my impression that the small shops mostly do business with small companies and not-for-profits. Small companies and not-for-profits are not, for the most part, "plugged in" to the trendy buzz about software development. They often don't have any computer-savvy employees. They simply have specific problems that they come to us to solve. They don't care how we solve them, and provided we do a decent job, they're usually blown out of the water by what we give them, and are very happy and grateful. They don't know .Net from C# from VFP from DOS from Windows Explorer from CPU from ICQ from AOL from DLL Hell. They couldn't care less what development software we use.

This is VFP's home. This is the core market. You ain't gonna make a living with VFP at any Fortune 500 company. You won't be on the bleeding edge while working with VFP--just as you can't be on the multimedia cutting edge while working in AM radio. But AM radio remains an important, profitable, and in some sectors, influential industry that puts a lot of food in a lot of people's mouths. Similarly, you can make a very comfortable living using nothing but VFP for the next two decades in the small business/not-for-profit sector. If you're good at what you do.

We have nothing to fear from .NET. They can't begin to compete with us on our home turf. It's far too expensive for .NET shops to develop the kinds of applications that do what we have been doing for years. Their price point is way out of reach of our customers. And VFP will be officially supported by MS until at least 2014, and will continue to work just fine on MS OSes for decades after that--just as FP-DOS applications continue to work today on Win XP.

We can go on this way for the rest of our careers.

So celebrate!

I'll be in Montreal in June for DevTeach. I'd love to meet you, if you're there.

Ken Dibble
www.stic-cil.org