could it possibly be the analogy you were so happily discussing. About everyone using chopsticks so you should? I'm not trying to change the subject at all. Just that you don't want me raining on your parade. With all the backslapping going on.

>I don't buy that analogy thou.
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>Which analogy?
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>The author was discussing software purchases as a pyramid. With developers at the point, there are fewer developers then users, who are at the bottom. The author was discussing software marketing, including development tools. And how you could look and see that because there are far more users then developers you would think that you should market towards users. But the author pointed out that this would be an invalid assumption because of how the choice of development tool is almost always made by the developer. So in this case the tip of the pyramid drives the bottom part.
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>Are we onto a new topic? OK... but you don't need a pyramid to see that you need to market development tools to those who make the decisions. Which is the developers in small firms and management in larger concerns.
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>I just don't think that many people work with a software tool if they don't find it that comfortable to do.
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>I think that's a safe general conclusion, though we're regularly told of developers using a particular tool because it's dictated by higher ups in one of the firms where managers make the decisions.
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>I think in many cases the user base for Dotnet and Java is so hugh because those are the choices for what's taught in most schools these days. I was just reading an editorial from the "Angry Programmer" where he states that he thinks it's wrong that many universities have slimmed down their IT offering to only include Java as the tool. He thinks that you can't be a real programmer unless you know how to design sorting algorithms, etc. from scratch.
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>Another new topic... is "the Angry Programmer" saying you can't write a bubble sort in Java? In any case, you have to ask which comes first: the chicken or the egg? There was a huge push for Java a decade ago, which prompted schools to start teaching it. Ditto NET. Ditto VFP in India, fwiw (I seem to recall KL made quite a big sale of academic editions some years back to Indian tertiary institutions.) Now there's serious momentum set by the developer pool's abilities, although IT moves so fast that stuff taught 3 years ago isn't particularly relevant anyway. IMHO you can take an eager, smart graduate of just about any field and train them to be an excellent developer. But again, a new topic.
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>Because something like VFP diverges from a tool like Java in some important areas, most developers will never like VFP.
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>I guess your destination was predictable ;-) but IMHO it's more accurate to say that most developers will never *experience" VFP, for all the reasons you've told us at every opportunity.