>>I'm glad to hear you are not married or joined at the hip to MS. As a company shouting that they want developers they sure know how make them upset (even the .Net guys have concerns about dropping future development on winforms).
>
>Agreed...
>
>>
>>I too have been looking into the Flex3 (actionscripts) data interface. I'm not in a place to really make a comment but it's not great so far. I setup a coldfusion install and think I'll be using it to access data. It's fast and has the ability to provide data routines (Stored Procedures???). But then again it is another layer between the UI and the data and cost money.
>
>I think the VFP programmers have been spoiled rotten by the all-in-one environment for IDE, data and programming language and object model ease and depth. That's not the "real world" where many other people live, where you need separate components for the various aspects of application building and deployment (e.g., database backends). Unfortunately.
>
>>
>>If you have time you might want to look at a screencast I did using Dabo (python) http://leafe.com/screencasts/realworlddabo.html
>>It's less than five minutes long.
>>
>
>I looked, I liked!
>
>>I like Dabo alot. I see it as a very good replacement for VFP without the IDE. But I wonder if that is all I need for the future (Dabo builds desktop apps - so does VFP). Although my primary customers would never consider placing their financial data on the internet (for many reasons) I wonder if programs like AIR would work. There is little doubt that at the moment web apps are not at the level of desktop apps with respect to speed and user interaction. But will they be there in the near future?
>
>Web apps, probably not, but something like SilverLight, probably yes. The idea (as I understand it) is to merge desktop and web app (or rather, smart client app) development into one single effort with all the widgets and gadgets and code in one place for both. It is possible because SilverLight looks for a light weight .NET plugin -thingy when it starts within a browser, and if it doesn't find it it downloads and installs it automatically, and from there on out the browser itself is running the .NET framework internally and pretty much independently of the host OS. Pretty slick, if they can make it work (I'm betting on Version 3 for that...) ;0)

I think the VFP programmers have been spoiled rotten by the all-in-one environment for IDE, data and programming language and object model ease and depth.

I wouldn't say spoiled rotten. It's just what we've grown accustomed to from the early years and I think M$ hates that.

That's not the "real world" where many other people live, where you need separate components for the various aspects of application building and deployment (e.g., database backends).

It's the "real world" for VFP developers and the "others" don't know how good it can be :)