>>>>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.
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>>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.
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>I've only been developing for about 5 years and I've worked at some rinky dink shops (so this statement could be coming from inexperience), but I do everything I need to do with my data just fine through .NET. I don't understand your implied ideas that .NET can't handle your data requirements. Maybe my apps aren't as data intensive as yours, but I do some cool stuff.
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>>I don't see VS as an improvement in coding or more productive
>
>Do you do any for of web work? ASP.NET is the bee's knees. Yeah it has some quirks that is accentuated by noobies not doing things correctly and taking shortcuts, but it is extremely powerful and really easy to use once you get past the transition from Windows development to Web development. I know there are third party components that allow for web projects through VFP but I like the idea that it's all built in to .NET.

I don't mean to say it wouldn't handle the data requirements, I'm just saying that it made it harder (more so the earlier versions, less so the later versions). It's a general dev platform, not something dedicated more to data, like VFP. Charles Hankey likes StrataFrame, but part of the reason, AFAICT, is due to the code they've created - from a VFP programmer's perspective - to handle data. So data handling is my job and I wasn't too wild about jumping to something that made it harder not easier. Today, that decision might be much easier with new features, new frameworks, etc.

I do web work with West Wind Web Connection.