Hi Bill,

>I've been learning C#. C# does a lot more than DBase II did, so there's a lot more to learn and therefore it will take a lot longer.

Longer, yes. However, if the goal isn't to learn C# and .NET and everything, rather to write this payroll application, this reduces the scope.

One problem with .NET is that it's difficult to just make a decision. No matter what you decide, someone is going to tell you that this is the wrong approach and there's another, better one. But honestly, if you need an application done, why shouldn't you create a single WinForm EXE that uses three tiers in a different classes or namespaces and accesses data with ADO.NET. OK, WPF is the future. Software as a service is cool. The approach is not really agile. The Entity framework might be an alternative. Immutability? Next time. Component based design with hundreds of DLL, sure, that's another possibility. Not using Web services today, well maybe next year.

In the end, I think it's technology and concepts that really impact productivity. If you've never done a web application, writing the first one is difficult, no matter what language you use. Creating a printer driver is as hard for a C++ MFC application developer as it is for a VFP application developer.