I'm going to disagree. I haved watched experienced developers learn dotnet in less than 3 months (not a 40 hour week mind you but rather an all day all evening commitment to learning) and become productive developing tools and utilities using dotnet. True, it seems that experienced java and Delphi developers pick it up even faster, but I have seen VFPers do the same. Now, that doesn't mean that they can sit down and develop a full fledged business app from start to finish after 3 months research without a lot of trial and error. But look at it this way, if you look back at your first few apps you wrote, how many would you leave exactly as is if you were developing them today? That does not mean that they don't suffice or don't work correctly, but if you were to write the same app today, I'd venture to guess you would do it alot differently. You would probably startout by creating the portions that could be reused and automatically separate the tiers. You could write most of it without even considering which method is faster, easier to modify or subclass down the road, or easier for other developers to reuse or understand. You would know automatically which method would best suit your purposes. That knowledge comes after years of experience and that is what is lacking in new users of dotnet. It is also true that not everyone has the same aptitude for learning new technologies. Sometimes it doesn't matter how good a developer you are but rather how well you can learn and adjust to new ways of doing things. In those areas, usually the younger the better. I can't believe I just wrote that! :o)


>John,
>
>Let's cut to the chase here. It will take a VFP developer more than three months to learn .NET. You can be as wordy as you like, you can mention Quickbooks as much as you want to but, it doesn't change the fact that it will take a VFP developer more than three months to learn .NET . :)
>
>>I detect a great deal of prejudice here. People who agree with one side are called enlightened and capable. People who reach a differing conclusion are not competent to decide, or have a vested interest, or are in some way deficient.
>>
>>I'm afraid this sort of "one size fits all" thinking is positively Soviet. That's why I keep posting the Quickbooks scenario. Are you seriously proposing that somebody serving that market is only competent if they decide that C# with SQL Server is the only way to go?
>>
>>Why should you care if some other business chooses to stick with VFP?! Are you not successful with dotNET? Does their decision affect your success in any way? If it does, your success is pretty fragile, which presumably is not the message you want to convey.