>>One thing I enjoy doing in SF ( and which really helped me to learn VFP ) is to step through framework source as I run my app. It is a very cool way to see what is really going on and it can get one running pretty quickly on the framework.
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>At my last job, that was one thing that was slowly driving me crazy ... none of the new developers who were newly assigned to my "platform" team *ever* did that. Consequently, they were not learning the framework at all, but were still supposed to be making "enhancements" to the framework .. which ultimately they did not do correctly and my former team-mates who *do* know the framework are now left cleaning up the mistakes that these noobies are making. What a way to run a ship ... I'm glad I'm outta there. <g>
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>~~Bonnie

You shoulda hired me <g> (assuming your company had no morals clause)

It also gave me an appreciation for how much real ugliness, tedium and grunt work a framework can protect you from. I don't *want* to invent roll-based security, localization, concurrency handling, message services, business object serialization strategies or a robust data layer. I don't want to figure out how to generate strongly type properties on business objects allowing for all the tricky stuff that is involved with different scenarios with custom fields. It's enough to figure out how to efficiently use (and modify it) in writing my apps.

Back in VFP it was forms handlers, toolbar handlers, granular security issues, concurrency, a data dictionary, class factory etc. Needed all that stuff just like my car needs a differential and my house needs a thermostat but I don't want to have to design or build one - and am not so lost to hubris to think I could do a better job than some pretty smart folks who do it for a living.