>Hi Boudewijn,
>
>I'm not really replying to you, but to those many messages in this thread with a common message of "this is all too late." I think there is room for varying opinions here, for various reasons. It is some of those various reasons I am going to list, in a hope to balance the scales of discussion.
>
>1) VFP is supported until Jan. 2010. If VFP.Net (my personal name for the eTecnologia effort) arrives by then (as Samuel has said, as of 2 months ago or less, that it would), then we will have a seamless transition in terms of developing with a supported product.
>
>2) None of the dynamic languages, to my knowledge, provide what VFP.Net gives in terms of a) building a CLI-compliant EXE; b) providing an easily extensible, in VFP code, IDE such as we have in VFP (but better); c) provide the full range of capabilities we have in debugging (think: use of the command window to test out alternatives, something I've done about 100 times at least in the last 2 days); d) provide VFP-style object subclassing of .Net controls. And a bunch of other things. In other words, VFP.Net is what a dynamic language should be in .Net, and more (they are adding a lot of additional features for a language which has been dormant for what, 4 years?).
>
>3) While it is possible to work without extensive metadata-driven and OOP framework support in VFP, that's not what I and many others have been doing for the last 7 years, at least. Match up plain VFP to .Net with training and experience in each, and it probably is something of a matchup. Match ours (and others) tools with what is available in .Net, and the story changes. .Net, partly due to its IDE, partly due to strong typing, partly due to the limitation of existing dynamic languages, does not give the power that VFP is capable of bringing to the software development table, and which VFP.Net is going to best. That's right: VFP.Net improves on VFP's development capabilities in numerous ways. Run a sql select through SQLEXEC and you will get back an updatable cursor. Wow! The cursor you get back is an object, and properties of that cursor can be bound with bindevent. Wow!
>
>4) VFP.Net will have the ability to design (and subclass) in what we think of as VFP forms, and have those forms compiled to WPF or Silverlight. Look at the threads on this topic here (in the .Net section) or other places, and you will read the laments of VFP developers, and the various suggested workarounds, along with the limitations these workarounds bring.
>
>I could go on. My perspective (and I realize it's one of many) is that I will be better served by VFP.Net than by either the strongly-typed languages or the current dynamic languages in .Net, in terms of my ability to deliver software applications that have the quality and speed of development that I currently have in VFP, combined with seamless access to .Net UI and infrastructure features. And what I build will be directly accessible through any other CLI-compliant .Net application, which will give me first-level membership in the .Net family.
>
>And yes, it has taken the 7-member team producing VFP.Net a while to create it. It is certainly not their only job. And for some things, they appear to have been waiting for .Net (and Mono: everything written in VFP.Net will run under Mono) to mature. I think it is worth the wait, and of course YMMV.
>
>Hank
>
>
>>The guys and gals at eTecnologia are working hard in making the next update of the NetCompiler available.
>>Right now there is one bug in a sample that ships with the product, they want to make sure that this bug is fixed before shipping it.
>>
>>What we may expect on new features is this:
>>Some fixes in the VFP Forms designer, including Visual Inheritance.
>>The property sheet now has a combo Tree that displays the nested controls, like VFP does.
>>
>>Coming with the next update is a sample called VFPNetControls01.
>>In this sample the following features are shown:
>>Net controls can now be hosted in vfp forms.
>>Visual inheritance for those controls is supported.
>>Auto event binding is automatic.
>>
>>The IDE is improved. Error markers give you better and more useful error descriptions.
>>The call stack window, that one that tells you what the path to the error is, is now no longer confused by attaching and detaching to and from processes.
>>
>>Debug info for the loops (IF, Do While, For EndFor) is improved.
>>Abbreviations, the famous 4 letter words, now work in the command window.
>>
>>PARAMETERS are now supported in the top level procedure.
>>So you can call your executable with parameters.
>>You can now invoke a prg just by doing SomePrg([params]).
>>This means more of your code compiles without errors.
>>
>>Catched (with CATCH TO) exceptions are now similar to VFP Exceptions with the same properties.
>>A new property InnerException in the Exception object, gives you access to the underlying .NET Exception object.
>>
>>LOCAL now supports dot syntax for types to be more compatible with VFP as in: LOCAL oInfo as MsGraph.Chart.
>>This syntax is valid only for LOCAL variables.
>>TLOCAL only supports NameSpace::Type syntax for consistency with the rest of the language.
>>
>>PUBLIC vars are now working.
>>
>>A new command ADD PROPERTY is available in classes.
>>This let you add new properties at design time to an inner object (eg an object in a form).
>>The added property becomes an structural property associated with the object, and therefore is inherited by any subclass.
>>The syntax is: ADD PROPERTY Path.To.Object.NewProperty [AS SomeType] [= expression]
>>
>>As said, eTecnologia is debugging one of the samples, so they are certain you receive a working thing.
>>This bug seems to be a mean beast, some patience is appreciated and once this update is available a loud applause is well received.
>>
>>Stay tuned, we're back after the commercials.
>>
>>Boudewijn Lutge®ink
>>Truth is a hallucination that the majority of people agreed upon. . . So why do I keep on questioning "the truth"?

Hank down difficult do you think it will be for someone who has used VFP for years to make the transition to VFP.new - I have no .Net experience?