Walter

You seem to be very touchy indeed - like a twitching, itchy finger on the trigger of a gun.

>I know gary... but my reply is NOT AN ATTACK ON .NET...

I have not suggested that you are attacking .NET. Moreover, I don't care if you are attacking .NET - .NET can stand up for itself, all by itself, despite any perceived or actual weaknesses. As a .NET developer, I am secure enough with the popularity, efficacy and compatibility of the platform to not feel threatened if someone says something negative about it. Unfortunately, this is not true for many legacy platforms that seem to spawn a high number of overly-vocal zealots. The more insecure they feel, the louder they shout.

>>It seems that a lot of Fox devs seem to be placing high hopes on the "ethnologica" offering to keep themselves relevant going forward - I sincerely hope that they are backing the right horse and that the company in question realize a commercial advantage for their efforts in trying to do what MS was not prepared to do. The Fox community tend to like things "for free" and as much of the Fox third party market realized over the years, if it isn't cheap, it won't sell. Time will tell.
>
>Again, you did not read my reply correctly. Where did I say that place high hopes in ethnologica ?? The only statement I made here is that dynamic languages *CAN* have type checking on compile time, as this company has proven. This is all I've said nothing more and nothing less.

Read my words Walter - I said "a lot of Fox devs seem to be placing high hopes". I didn't say "you seem to be placing high hopes" or, "Walter Meester is placing high hopes". To assume that I am lumping you in with a "lot of Fox devs" is over presumptuous on your part, and if you don't mind me saying, a tad paranoid too.

>The point is that comments like "I only hear VFP-ers make this argument, while in the rest of the IT world it does seem to be an issue" should be examined carefully before concluding something.

I don't need to examine my statement because it is my experience. I can only relay my experience as you can only relay yours.

>LINQ is filling a gap that VFP/FOX had since decades. MS finally confirmed this to be valuable and included this in the language. I've had many discussions with members up here that local data processing is valuable before LINQ showed up and MS has proven that to be correct despite the argument "No-one in the rest of the IT world thinks this is an issue": Just because you don't know what you don't know

I am not sure I am making your connection of "MS proving local data processing to be correct before LINQ showed up". Perhaps you can clarify exactly what you mean here.

Notwithstanding, probably the most flawed piece in the LINQ puzzle is LINQ to SQL (I assume this is to what you refer as VFP only did in-line SQL against tables/cursors). IMHO, the best use of LINQ is against XML and in-memory collections. With data abstractions, O/R Mapping systems, frameworks and DALs at my disposal, the idea of pushing hard-coded in-line SQL into my code appears to offer me very limited advantage indeed. It reminds me of the VFP CursorAdapter that just didn't make it into most commercial (and homegrown) VFP frameworks because it offered very little over and above what was already available. If you are suggesting that LINQ to SQL is a nod to this Foxpro legacy, I think you are mistaken. In fact, in-line SQL in VFP was great for "quick and dirty" and this, unfortunately, is part of the Foxpro legacy too. The fact that you can do so many "quick and dirty" things in VFP (like adding properties "on the fly") is what gave VFP its somewhat undeserved bad reputation in many quarters. If LINQ to SQL floats your boat, then great. However, again, this feature is not IMHO going to keep your average .NET developer partying all night. If I really want to query data "on the fly", I can just pass a SQL query string as a parameter to an appropriate method and bingo, I have my data back. However, a consistent way to query XML documents and in-memory collections, well that's a whole different "kettle of fish".

>Also, the DLR is added to .net to provide more easy implementation of dynamic languages. MS has may have dropped VFP from it developer tools list, but certainly not the dynamic languages. To me the dynamic language with code- and compile time type checking is the future of all development tools, not the strict type languages like the current implementations of C# and VB.NET.

We appear to be on yet another cycle and dynamic languages are now popular again. FYI, I am currently using IronPython in a C# project where it has found an appropriate use-case. However, the DLR provides no more vindication for VFP than LINQ to SQL does :)