Terry,

>These conversion shops don't write applications - they sell snake oil, books and seminars to un productive - i-need-an-excuse-for-not-being-able-to-do-it-myself wanna be's...

You don't have any idea what you're talking about related to the "conversion shops." They do, indeed write applications -- and some very large and impressive ones. Gee, do you see a need at all for basing your rants on actual facts?

>A "real" programmer would do it hisself - and would never, NEVER, hire an out of house shop to do a rewrite for them.

The programmers are not always the decision makers. However, plenty of real programmers and managers are "real" enough to realize that they could benefit from mentoring, training, project management, infrastructure development, and so forth, from people who HAVE delivered successful projects.