I have written an article on this topic that will be published in the October 2005 issue of UT Magazine.


>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.
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>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.
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>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...