Good post. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I guess I look at learning something new on a different level than making a living. Yes I have dabbled with .NET to see what the fuss is about, but in the meantime I get calls from companies that are looking for Foxpro programmers. So much so, that learning .NET took a backseat for the moment. And the satisfaction of making a good application quick and easy satisfies both me and the customer.
I also found from my own attempts at .NET that either the product is making me take steps backwards (or just not ready fro primetime - as Foxpro a long time ago) or I just no longer have the patience to re-invent the wheel. But there are many programmers with your views on the subject, and many programmers that still hold my views on the topic.


>Not directed at you personally, Mike, but what you said - which makes a certain kind of sense - got me thinking about something very basic that seems to get overlooked in our discussions of the pros and cons of moving from Fox to something new. Sometimes the choices are driven by employer decisions etc but for those of us who are independent developers, consultants and software designers there seems to be a difference in how we approach the issue. I am 62 and if I thought the rest of *my* career was going to involve supporting legacy apps - especially those written by others - I'd put a gun in my mouth. You seem to find it a source of comfort. - and we are both right. We are just very different people. And I think that essential difference explains a lot about why there are such divergent reactions to this seismic change in our "community".
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>I guess for me the question is why did we get into this to begin with and what non-monetary rewards do we derive from it.
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>Personally, I was fascinated by something new and powerful and intellectually challenging.
>Five or six years ago I realized that in a month of intense Fox work if I increased my knowledge or skillset by 1% I was having a good month - the rest of the time it was those same old twelve bar blues. If I hadn't switched entirely to a SQL Server back end a couple years before and Mike and Toni hadn't been doing such interesting things with VFE I think my disillusionment would have come earlier than that.
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>I was making a lot of money and I derived a certain satisfaction, as I've always done, from system analysis, mentoring and project rescue for other developers, but the language I was using was not growing in significantly exciting ways and the resources and a pool of brain power dedicated to its future were diminishing rapidly.
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>One of the big attractions of learning .NET was that the learning curve was so steep and the peak so far away. I was ignorant enough to be able to double my knowledge daily <bg>
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>Most of the developers I admired most were getting excited by other things and while still trying - for the most part - to be sensitive to the feelings of their professional friends who would be perfectly happy to program in Fox forever - were moving away from Fox.
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>The excitement that made this fun in 1995 was gone. VFP was a good as it ever was - just as a 21" Sylvania vacuum tube TV with rabbit ears might still get a picture that in in 1962 would have you dreaming of color in front of the picture window of Gene's TV and Appliance store.
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>VFP isn't dead. It is exactly as good as it ever was for all the things it is good for and that was and is a lot. And there are some bright folks making commendable efforts to expand its utility into the future. But for me it is no longer exciting and new and fun and there are a whole lot of things it will never do and a whole lot of apps one will never be asked to create if one insists on using it. And anyone who is any good at it cannot keep learning new stuff at the rate we did in 1995.
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>The thing I like about .NET now is what I liked about Fox 20 years ago - it was a challenge and you could do things with it you couldn't do using anything else ... or at least using what you were currently using. And a lot of very very smart people were putting a lot of effort into using, improving, teaching and expanding it. And new smart people were joining the ranks every day to offer their contributions and perspectives.
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>UT or Foxite are probably the best resources for Fox developers to share expertise. Compare them with Stackoverflow, Code Project or a dozen other sites and that alone would be reason for me to want to be involved in .NET.
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>Embracing change or innovation is not a requirement to be happy. But some professions encourage it more than others. CPAs and blacksmiths don't see it as a big plus.
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>But for guys like me - who got into this as about his fifth career because it was a head rush and I could be surrounded by some mental horsepower that impressed me - I am very grateful that something came along that got me excited about software development again.
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>>>I used to be a VFP pro, I switched to c# a few years ago and not looking back.
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>>>So, I had a tought about this place tonight and I was wondering how this whole thing is still holding together...
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>>>Back for news... no flame please....
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>>Stephane, as you know ,I have made a living from Foxpro since 1986 and the more of you leave Foxpro for something else, to more work I have to support what you guys leave behind. So keep on leaving Foxpro, I'll never retire.