Gary,

>I have seen a few threads on this board where VFP developers delving into .NET ask this or a similar variant of this question. I can tell you that it's only VFP developers who ask this question. The rest of the IT world seems to have managed without adding properties at runtime. Go figure :)

I've seen this argument a little too often. Though you might be right in your assesment that you've only seen this from VFP developpers, but truly that does not mean the request is not valid...

Now, I actually agree that in this particular case you're right that you seldomly want to add a property at runtime. I've only used this in very exceptional cases (Adding a property to _Screen or other fixed objects for example)

That being said, if you think that the rest of the IT world don't ask for it because of its bad practise, I think you'll have to think again. For example, a VFP developer might ask how to do SQL on local ADO.NET data. Up until LINQ everyone except the VFP developer would have answered that data processing belongs to the server. With LINQ this has changed toward the VFP attitude.

IOW, it is not that things are not supposed to be handled this way, but just because the other regular tools don't offer you these options. IOW, you don't know what you dont know. The same thing about using dynamic languages like VFP as oposed to strict type languages: The same arguments come up again like compile time type checking.

Great if you compare VFP with .NET, but actually when using this argument you really don't understand what the difference is between dynamic and strict typed languanges:

1. Dynamic languages can have (optional) compile time type checking, as proven by ethnologica. It is just that you're not forced to go through hoops of reflection. You'll have best of both worlds.

2. I don't know why people think that compile-time checking is so great. It actually is and was utterly cumbersome. I know that my C/C++ teacher at university once said that he had to send his code to a central C compiler, wait for about half an hour to find he had made a typing or casting mistake. Oh great... Why on earth, with all the processing power available today, we still don't have type checking when writing the actual code ???

Food for thought, in stead of slamming the other in silly language wars.