I think most people here would disagree with both you and Rick. I get the impression Rick is now dismissing VFP because he's so heavily involved with .NET and possibly looking at it to grow his business. Developers here are not interested in every esoteric aspect of programming because they're more practical than that. And the enthusiasm here and the general community can't be matched by any other programming group, as has been commented on many times by Ken L. and others here. They even made a point of studying the UT to improve .NET communities!

>I've made your point several times.
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>I just mentioned how in Los Angeles, Countrywide Mortgage is making a hugh investment in .Net. Does anyone really think that Countrywide would jepardize their entire company by betting the ranch on an unproven technology? They did a substantial amout of due diligence before making the decision.
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>I completely agree with you about developers. Companies that do make wrong technology decisions get bit in the end because they will have substantial trouble getting employees. Most tech types do this for the enjoyment of playing with adult toys. You won't find too many people who want to play with toys that are broken out of the box.
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>I've taken some classes in Java as well as some self study. The book I used for self study was from a group called "Headfirst". Best computer book I've ever read. They also have a website with forums. One of the largest forums is on UML, design patterns, etc. The only time I've ever heard them discussed with VFP was in Markus' book. And the topic was met with total silence.
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>PF
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>>>And you think that developers really have a choice after the wheels are in motion.
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>>Yeah I do. If a product really sucks and can't cut it, you bet that developers will get a say. As it is developers are quick to point at technology that sucks and without developer support a product like .NET would have never gotten of the ground.
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>>Microsoft caters to developers and tries to win their support with marketing and incentives and other tricks, but at the end of the day if the product was really inferior, it would still fail.
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>>The problem <g> is that .NET is not an inferior product. Sure it has its rough edges and there are plenty of people who don't know the weaknesses and have signed off on them anyway. But the reality is that .NET is being used not because it's crammed down developers throats but because developers have chosen to use it and there is support behind it. Go to a conference like TechEd or PDC and check out the enthusiasm at these conferences. It's something you will not find at Fox conferences any longer unfortunately. It was not that long ago (in the late 90's) that this was the case.
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>>These are not people following the party line because their management told them to but these are people who want to be doing this stuff. The same can be said for the Java community so this is nothing unique about .NET. But it is something that's generally lacking in the VFP community.
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>>This place right here is about the most active VFP community around, but beyond that it's a wasteland.
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>>>1. Sequential execution
>>>2. Repetitive execution
>>>3. Conditional execution
>>>
>>>Nothing new in that department for many years.
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>>I don't agree with that. Especially if you look at ASP.NET and how the engine works it doesn't fit that model at all. Although the end result may be the same, the development approach is much more logical than the typical Web development approach. Add to that the superior design of the platform that was designed from the ground up for scalable Web development and you have something that is very different from the tools we have to use (COM) with VFP (or VB6 etc.).
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>>There are more than one way to skin a cat and some ways are just more efficient and easier to deal with.
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>>+++ Rick ---
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>>
>>>
>>>Like you said "What are the other options?"
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>>>You also said that VFP did'nt get the attention it deserved because of the language. It's not better or worst than other languages or dialects.
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>>>The only difference is that VFP is fully geared toward data-centric apps. Besides that it's the same as all other languages:
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>>>1. Sequential execution
>>>2. Repetitive execution
>>>3. Conditional execution
>>>
>>>Nothing new in that department for many years.
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>>>It's all in the marketing. It's just a matter of how hard you can push it. And MS can push harder than many enterprises <g>