>Well think about it for a second... you said VFP programmers wouldn't be hurting now if they had done the .NET thing 3 years ago. Then you said that .NET has problems with it's I/O capabilities (and apparently SOME of them are being addressed in LINQ).

>SO people should have done the .NET migration?... to an inferior product 3 years ago that isn't even going to match the I/O capabilities this year?????

>People should have done the .NET migration thing when by your own admission the VB.NET developers (the Microsoft folk) do not understand data even to this day????

>As for "picking your battles", your error in that is the the petition is not a "battle" at all. Not even a skirmish. It is a simple and peaceful and elegant way of trying to effect some change to a policy/decision by the people who are adversely affected by that policy/decision. And YOU are one such person too.



I hate to jump in the middle of anything and I don't want to sound condescending but this is way off base. I am one of those developers that started adopting .Net 3 years ago. After 3 years I am pretty confident in my abilities with it. I don't want to burst any bubbles but calling any .Net language "inferior" to VFP only serves to demonstrate an ignorance of both platforms. .Net might not be everyone's cup of tea but to bash it without knowing anything about it "under the hood" is ridiculous.

In my opinion VFP has only one thing going for it over .Net languages: The ease of of data manipulation. Please note that ease does not make a concept better, just as implied, only easier. For n-tiered development using a business object to SP approach you lose most of that ease benefit of VFP. If you look at what the .Net platform brings to the table versus VFP you will find a long list. It is worth it to develop in c# to me just to get away from the misery that is registered DLLs and .ocx controls which are darn near required to bring a VFP UI into the modern world.

I have been coding in VFP 10+ Years now and I love the tool but time marches on. I loved my toaster oven too but I gotta admit that the microwave oven is pretty nifty. Don't get me wrong, I am not a MSFT fanboy, I am a realist. I enjoy gainful employment. I have gotten very fond of keeping the bills paid. To me that means having as large a skillset as possible as to approach a job with the best tools for it.

VFP is an exceptional tool but it is up against the clock. Albeit no time soon but in the not too distant future 64 bit OS's will become more and more the norm leaving VFP out in the cold. A wise developer will have another tool mastered long before that day comes. That is the choice of the individual developer however. On the bright side, the world needs plenty of bartenders!

I hope the open movement for VFP gets off the ground but I doubt it will. Call me pessimistic but I dont see MSFT giving up their intellectual property (which is helping to power LINQ and SQL Server) to create a competitor for their core development tools. Call me crazy.