Yup, Visual Foxpro was fast as hell, although IMO the speed topped out around version 3. And not just fast on rinky-dink tables, as long as they were reasonably indexed. Stick the server component of a c/s solution on the same server as where the data resides, and performance was great for tables having over 1M records. It was a good on the "back end" of web servers, for example.

More than speed though, I enjoyed the data-centric programming language. It was a joy to use and a bunch of functionality could be smashed into just a few lines of code. I miss it.

I think the real reason for it's demise is that it was cutting into the per-seat profits of SQL Server. Throw a VFP application on a file server and it was available to a bunch of users for free. We still use a server-based app where I work that is run several thousand times per month, trouble-free.