I had a very similar path starting with dBASE III Plus.

As you say the productivity it (xBASE/FoxPro/Clipper) offered was remarkable. One of the tools that I really wish I had was a FoxPro/Clipper compiler that took a subset of the language (general purpose stuff and screen functionality) and compiled it to either C or Go with ncurses. Who knows, I might have AI help me build one.