If there is one dead language at this time it is VB.
MS stopped to support VB in a way that old VB6 code cannot run in VB.NJET eeerrrrhhhmmm .NET (I guess that .NJET is a Freudian error)
When looking at VFP, well, even though it may not be the best way to work you can still use old DOS code in VFP8, backward compatibility is a high priority in the VFP TEAM so it seems.
As said, VFP8 is supported till 2010 and the foxteam is now working on VFP9, codename Europa.
Also, the VFP team and the Visual DataTools team (lead by Yair Alan Griver) joined forces to open the trye power of VFP, blazing fast data-access, to the .NET languages in the future.
So if it comes to dependencies I'ld say that .NEt will greatly depend on VFP in the future.
Just for my better information, how much does this "professor" know about programming tools anyway?
Les Pinter has a nice strategy for selling VFP apps.
He first shows to his audience, most likely managers and budget-responsible people, the whol;e myriad of classes and possibilities of
VB.Net of C# or whatever they can come up with.
He is driving them crazy with all the things you can do in .NET to a point where they ask him for a price to develop that must-have application XYZ.
He gives them the price and the time to deploy the app and tells them there is an alternative.... and then says, "nahhh, you probably won't be interested, it will cost you only 25% of the price I just mentioned but it won't be interesting of you". Well, those budget-responsible people ARE interested then, and then he shows them his "special framework, developed in C++, AKA VFP".
He drives their minds to a boiling point with another show-off from VFP and compares that with the things he just showed to his audience. And shows that it is indeed, remarkably quicker, and, what's more, cheaper!!
Those pointy hair managers are NOT interested in the latest and hottest techniques. They are interested in working apps. basically that is one of the reasons why there are still a lot of DOS and FPW 2x apps out there, they work!! Those budget-responsible people are not interested at all in the latest and hottest techniques, they are interested in time to develop/deploy and license costs. And that is where VFP shines as never before.
In the current staggering economy VFP is THE tool to use to develop relative cheap apps.
Mind you, I know of one company that was thinking of getting either MS SQL server or Oracle for their datastorage.
Talking with them I found out that their biggest table contained about 7.5 million records and was relatively small.
(good datadesign could even improve the size->getting smaller)
I showed them VFP and what it could do for them.
Then they came up with "But what about the license costs?" well, you know the answer don't you...
Guess what they picked for development...
Boudewijn Lutge®ink
Boudewijn.Lutgerink@foxite.comIf we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? (Einstein)