>You lamers and your Windows. Us 3lite use Linux.

I was thinking about doing that but with global warming and all how long is that penguin gonna last ?

I'm going to hold off using an operating system until I really need an operation. Maybe by that time Canada will have melted into Ohio and I'll have better health care.

>
>>Just to add to what Mike-the-Microsoft-Basher said :
>>
>>Amazing how VS can be so extensible and yet the properties window is so incredibly lame. (some clever user could fix it - I'm working on getting clever enough - but they put up with it because they've never see the cool new stuff in VFPx.) The lack of RAD built in for UI stuff is stunning (again - all user extensible but would it have killed MS to actually make use of some of their tags etc. ) ( VFP out of the box sucks too but all our 3rd party framework people have done good stuff with wizards and builders)
>>
>>Getting stuff into the toolbox after a build is iffy and often requires multiple VS restarts etc.
>>
>>Russell - you are right on the money about SF - the data handling is good because it was designed by VFP developers who expected to be able to handle data and who we not seduced by MS "evangelists" claiming they had it under control.
>>
>>Steve Taylor, who is damn near as old as I am and owns Microfour gave a great talk at the training class last summer about his philosophy as a developer and framework designer and a lot of it was based on a very realistic and skeptical view of the MS marketing-led evangelism for betas paraded as the next Great Thing. Lots of 'Let's wait and see how it shakes out and design our stuff around the stuff that actually works now'
>>
>>And what can you say about a company who hired Ken Levy and then puts him to work primarily interfacing with humans? <bg> ( to their credit they also hired Yag and Beth and seem to have got that right )
>>
>>>>>You're just a Microsoft apologist with no mind of your own. Stick it.
>>>>
>>>>Just so you don't think I'm an MS apologist, here are some things that piss me off about MS:
>>>>1) VS2008 needs another SP or two before it is ready for serious use. I've wasted enough time putting up with the quirks - quirks that did not exist in VS2005.
>>>>2) They really need to keep most of their software in an extended Beta phase. I use Vista at home and have no problems with it now, but when it was release it was almost comical.
>>>>3) They really need to quit sending mixed signals to their developers about new .NET features. ADO.NET was the original Data Access solution, then Linq To SQL was supposed to be the future, but that was quickly "replaced" with Entity Framework. It's really hard to embrace their new concepts when they're quickly replaced. That leads to people like me that still use straight up ADO.NET.
>>>>4) Related to the above, they should really embrace open source add-ons to their products. nHibernate, nUnit, Test Driven, etc. are all great products and you hardly hear a peep about them from the evangelists. However, MS has no problems holding back on the advanced controls so the third-party commerical control market thrives.
>>>>5) Why is licensing so freaking complicated? You need to have a PhD just to understand it, especially for large web clients.
>>>>6) They're marketing is really behind par, and most of their advertising campaigns feel completely reactive to a competitor.
>>>>7) Related to 6, I have a hard time keeping their product lines and certification paths straight.
>>>>
>>>>If I had more time I could probably make a fairly long list. However, despite this list I still feel .NET is the best choice for what I do. ASP.NET is a breeze for the most part, SQL Server is rock solid, and resources online are plentiful. Yes, there is crap, but don't you get that with everything? Yes, there was a learning curve, as there is with any other new technology. It seems the learning curve from VFP to .NET is greater than the learning curve from other platforms to .NET because VFP had a special way of doing things. I worked with VFP shortly and really enjoyed it, however the market dictated I had to move on. The thing that frustrates me the most about VFP developers is that they act like they had a special bond with VFP that nothing else will ever touch and I don't "get" that . Personally, I see that as taking your job a bit too seriously, but maybe I will feel that way after more years of .NET work. I think that loyalty breeds pot shots on .NET without fully understanding it.
>>>
>>>Alright, you're off the M$ apologist list. <g> You make valid points. Each person/company/consultant/whatever has to make their own choice. I have not really heard anything bad - beyond what I'd expect for a sophisticated back end like that - about SQL Server. I might not choose it, but I'm sure it would serve me well if I did. Yeah, I felt a special bond with VFP. I develop mission critical database applications for my clients and it is built for data from the ground up. Not .NET. It has gotten better, of course, and Charles Hankey has pointed out how his framework of choice - StrataFrame - lets him handle data so well. I attribute that to its creators being VFP developers. M$ literally said - referring to VS 2008 before it came out - that in that release "Visual Studio would get serious about data." Oh, that irked me. I've had to be serious about data for a long time and had a tool that let me, but they killed it. No reason it couldn't be continually modernized like any other language. I don't see VS as an improvement in coding or more productive, but I will admit I'm not coding in it now. Even if I'm wrong, if VFP were still being actively developed, I believe it would be just as productive. Well, anyway, thanks for that good reply.