Win32 & the future (Posts: Mike Helland)

From this thread:

I recall Jim Alchin saying at a meeting "Nothing will happen to Win32."

If that's true, Microsoft ensures VFP being around and functional.

If that's not true, and Microsoft blatantly lied (or rather, failed to uphold Mr. Alchin's promise), then the computer industry will ensure the proper hardware and software technology exists to keep running Win32, and thus VFP keeps running for decades to come.

Anyone "worried" about the future of VFP can stop ragging on Microsoft, because someone is out there stockpiling Intel Pentiums and Windows 2000 licenses and if Microsoft does "kill" VFP, VFP will be around and our existing source code will be viable anyways.

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Microsoft cannot kill VFP.

In order to do that they would have to kill Win32, which I doubt they would do.

And even if they do, the technology industry has invested in it to the point where Microsoft would be ordered by the courts to maintain Win32 (given the number of Win32 applications our government runs I find this somewhat likely) or by that time the industry will offer something like WINE2000, meaning we maintain Win32 itself.

It is true that "VFP is dead!" in the sense that we won't see exciting new versions.

But, I really can't think of any new features that would make or break VFP as a solution for a decade to come.