You go,Mike! Don't worry about our friend on the islands....he's just weird.

>>Folks,
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>>I'm going to keep this simple. Early last year I went on haitus as a test engineer and moved back into the developer world. I was fortunate that I was hired by a company that I had already worked with years ago and they re-hired me by past reputation and were willing to overlook the fact that my last relevent programming experience was .Net 1,0 and sketchy with that and needed time to ramp-up.
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>>I know a lot of you don't have that advantage and employers are looking for immediately usable skills. Especially in this economy. So I am going to suggest a series of steps to gain a foundation that you can use to get to where you need to be. I'm assuming that you're willing to bust butt on your own time while doing what you have to do to pay the bills.
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>>Also, I don't want to take anything away from the EDS or Oak Leaf bootcamps and training. My only concern with those is that they go a mile wide but an inch deep. I'm not clear what marketable skills you gain with practical application.
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>>So here are the lessons I've learned and my suggestions. They are not all-inclusive. They are not expert. They are just what has helped me and the pitfalls I've run into and how you can mitigate them.
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>>1. Language is irrelevent when at the ground-level. Walk away from the C# versus VB argument. From the VFP perspective, VB.NET is easier to understand and 99% as functional. What you'll find as you get more proficient is that it's just as easier to understand or code in either. So focus on VB.Net. Once you understand VB code without a reference manual, C# will make sense and you'll find yourself pretty much equally adept at either.
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>>2. Get foundational literature. Anything by Charles Petzold works for me (the Programming Windows series, for example). I found myself using old functions like Str() because I could when I should have been thinking x.ToString. I had to make a mental effort to break that pattern and it really pays off as you get more into the complex Framework types.
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>>3. Get a buddy. You are going to have, from a .NET developers perspective, stupid questions. It's inevitable. Have someone or someones who are willing to answer your seemingly dumb questions without issue.
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>>4. Ignore the bleeding edge. If building a basic ASP.NET page befuddles you, you have no business looking at Silverlight or cloud computing. Get confident in the basics and it'll add tremendously to your understanding of the other stuff.
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>>5. Set a functional goal. If an employer is not already paying you to do so, finf something simple worth doing and code your first project towards that. Or convert your simplest VFP app.
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>>6. Apply Extreme Programming (XP) principles. Your first app may work but your code will suck. So what? One ot the tenets to XP is to refactor until good. Once something works, refactor towards best practices. If you break it,so what? Revert to working code.
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>>7. Do not assume examples on the Web are canon, In the old Fox world, for the most part, people only posted code that they knew worked. Not so these days - there is a lot of crap out there. Take the ideas to heart as presented but be very leery of the code - especially if it's using Northwind or AdventureWorks since those dbs seem to be the refuges of the semi-competent.
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>>8. Take pride of ownership, If you're a good VFP developer you will be a good .NET developer. Be proud of making things that work no matter how minor. You'll get better because if you've already mastered VFP then .NET is just a different syntax.
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>>9. Give it time. Don't get frustrated, Think about how long it took you to master what you already know and expect another learning curve here as well. Not all skills are transportable to .NET from VFP but common sense is.
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>>Wow. Guess I was long-winded, huh? For those of you who have made the transition, please add additional pointers? For those of you who wish to make the transition, please post questions or concerns.
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>>A rising tide floats all boats,huh?
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>Good advice, John. I am actually doing something similar now. Some differences:
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>2. Petzold wrote the bible on Windows development in the early days. When I looked at his .NET books they didn't seem all that different. I have a number of C# books. My two favorite all-in-one books are the ones by Andrew Troelsen and Joe Mayo. Once the basics of C# are learned, "Effective C#" and "More Effective C#" by Bill Wagner have some great advice.
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>6. Not doing XP, don't know anything about it. I will put it on the list.
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>7. I do not claim to be more than semi-competent yet but the demo app I am working on does indeed use Northwind as the the database. My thinking was it's fairly simple and familiar. There is no app that I have a burning desire to develop so I decided to use Northwind instead of inventing something. Actually I do have a desire to develop a soccer referee scheduling system, but that is more complex than I want in a first app. I just want something I can show prospective employers to prove I can do it, not just read about it.
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>I got an unbelievably lucky break last week. I was looking for work and touched base with a recent client whose FoxPro DOS I had converted to VFP 9. Not only do they have some work for me, they want me to help convert their VFP apps to .NET. The guy I will report to said the other developer on the conversion will be using VB but I am free to use C#. Not only that, the first one he wants me to do is one I previously converted to VFP, so I don't have to go through that learning curve again. This is perfect for me. I have not gotten anywhere landing a .NET job without any work experience. In this job market when they say they want X years of experience they seem to really mean it.
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>PS -- I received a letter from our friend on the islands, warning me not to compete with him or face a civil suit. How could I compete with him when he didn't tell us anything? <g>