Look, I'm not going to tell you VB in bad, XF is good. That's sales and marketing crap.
I would simply suggest that you look at the level of innovation in the you see in XF in a short period of time and compare that to the the last two years of VB releases. Which strikes you as more inovative? Which makes you believe it can deliver new features in a timely fashion?
One of the things I do for my customers is technology evaluations based on projected five year roadmaps. Last year, I had a client that had the option of a 3-year technology refresh of basically the same technology, just a later generation, for roughly $30 million or they could go in a completely different direction at a cost of $58 million, experience the pain of technology migration, but increase their overall market responsiveness and lower their long term operating costs. They chose the latter, even though it was doubel the cost, but made back that extra capital expense in under one year from operating budget savings and over the next two years, they'll get a return on their investment.
I used the same type of analysis with XF. It doesn't have all the add-ons that VB does, but its core is much more solid. Without getting into the coding details, they are going to be able to bring extended functionality to market much faster than VB will. In my humble, but experienced estimation, within 5 years, XF will significantly erode the VB install base. Thats coming from someone who had VB licenses for over 9 years.
Make up your own mind, but don't make it based on loyalty and emotion. Remember, your loyalty isn't to VB, or XF for that matter. Its to your community. And here's the most important thing, they aren't loyal to you but rather to their internet experience. As it evolves, you need to evolve. In the 90s, I ran several Wildcat BBBs (dating myself now) and we had large, vibrant, loyal communities. These were even local, with people getting together off the BBS. And they don't exist anymore, because the internet evolved, how people used it changed and the BBS couldn't adapt.
Inovation is a two-edged sword.
