Craig,

Thanks...that's fine, I respect that. We can agree to disagree. While I don't feel backed into any corner, yes, these debates do get frustrating and I sometimes wonder what the point is.

But please know that I didn't throw out things like asynchronous processing and raising/responding to events as a means to terminate the discussion with a simple trump card. Jeff's challenge included scalability, a very broad topic. I chose to go into some details by tasks including (but limited to) checking for emails and polling. These are handled more efficiently in .NET. Yes, they can be done in Fox, but as the application grows in size, the latter is operating from an inefficient premise.

I agree that developers often cling to a single technology. I have 4 calling cards, .NET/SQL/VFP/Crystal. I'd love to learn more, but there are so many hours in a day.

Yes, picking battles wisely is good advice. In this instance, I was challenged, and offered to use the challenge as a form of education for the community.

And finally, a few have mentioned LINQ in these discussions. To be fair, I'll welcome the capabilities in LINQ. I've never said .NET was perfect at handling local data. It can always be improved. But somehow there is this perception that the plans for LINQ complete invalidate what can be done today. Just because new (and welcome) additions are down the road, does not mean that all of the problems cannot be addressed today.

And also to be fair, LINQ is being discussed by .NET developers who haven't used fox. MSDN Codecamp in NJ had a session on LINQ that was well-attended.

Thanks, (and congrats on receiving your MVP award)
Kevin