Denis,

>I've been a witness of that. A VB programmer that took a job as a VFP programmer. He did what he had to do as a consultant by reading a book when he got stuck. Hmm quite a professional ;-)

I don't know if you are being sarcastic about the "quite a professional" comment, but in my opinion what you have described is, in fact, one of the marks of a professional.

A professional developer *should* know enough about general programming concepts and have a broad enough understanding of a variety of platforms to step into any situation and use reference materials where needed to quickly get up to speed.

I also worked with a VB programmer who had to learn VFP because he was assigned to a VFP to SQL Server project -- primarily because of his SQL Server experience. Because he was a professional with considerable experience in other languages, he got up to speed in VFP amazingly fast. He went through Jim Duffy's written coursework, referred to the help file and asked questions when needed.

Two of the most important marks of a professional are that you do what you have to do and that you never stop learning. I'm not saying that someone who stops learning is not a professional -- but I'm saying that such a person is likely to find fewer and fewer opportunities over time.

Applied to VFP, this means that I plan to continue learning new technologies while still making my living with about 90% VFP work at the moment. If that percentage changes (as it has from time to time) I have other skills to bring to the front for a season because I have taken the time to learn.

And when there is nothing to do in areas I know well (as has happened from time to time) I'll take on a project where I have to quickly learn, such as the PHP/MySQL project I did by spending two days reading a PHP book before starting. (And, no, I didn't pass myself off as a PHP expert to the person doing the hiring -- I simply stated my experience with web development in ASP, ASP.NET, West Wind Web Connection, HTML, JavaScript and SQL Server, and told him that it's mostly just a matter of syntax and that I would get up to speed in PHP quickly on my own time). The project was done in a week and I added to my knowledge base (and resume) at the same time.