>>So, you're advising him to not only learn VFP, but also, on top of that, a framework. Twice the learning curve, as to my experience...
>
>You are right, of course - there is more to learn if you use a framework. But then, if you don't get a third-party framework, you basically have to make your own framework.

I made the oo-jump (from fpw to vfp) with Visual Maxframe. Later I had to learn Codebook. Neither VMF, nor Codebook made me happy. In my private projects I abandoned both frameworks and started to develop with the basics of VFP. Only after I learned the basics I had enough knowledge to understand what VMF and Codebook were about. The point is, developing with a framework is fine, but only until something goes wrong. At that moment you have to dig into the sourcecode of the framework, which, by nature, is completely vague to a starter. You're lost in (caught by) the framework.

But I'm not saying here that frameworks are worthless. I only want to warn newbee Jimmy Johnson that it's risky to choose a (costly) framework now (based on what knowledge is that choice?), spend a lot of energy to learn the concepts of the one framework, and later having to admit that this did not imply that learning VFP itself could be skipped. No, I think it's better to first learn the basics of VFP and only then eventually buy and learn a framework, eventually...