I went through a learning curve similar to yours and have reached similar conclusions. As I was going through the learning process, I was grateful for the tips and advice offered by so many, yet frustrated that a book did not exist that explained, in detail, how to build an application or an application framework. I wrote “Build Your Own Framework” (Hentzenwerke 2004) to be the book that helps in that learning process.

Contrary to the tile of the book, it is helpful for anyone who wants to learn more about frameworks regardless of whether they intend to “build” or “buy” their framework.

Ken Chazotte



>Should a newbee start developing with the basics of VFP, or first of all choose a framework and start developing with that framework? In other words, what are the pros and cons for a newbee of working with a framework from the beginning? This is a recurring theme, but a controversy that has never been settled well, so opinions please.

>Here's my opinion:
>I made the oo-jump (from FoxPro Windows to Visual FoxPro) 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 Visual FoxPro. 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 newbees 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 Visual FoxPro itself could be skipped. No, I think it's better to first learn the basics of Visual FoxPro and only then eventually buy and learn a framework, eventually...