>>>>>>There are a lot of .NET developers out of work here, too. As you say, things have been tough all over. I have invested quite a bit of time in learning .NET, both formal classes and self-study, and have not been able to get a foot in the door without work experience. In a more robust economy sometimes people are given that first chance based on general skills, how they present themselves in the interview, etc. These days it seems like employers are saying the want X years of experience and insist on it. I don't blame them. If you have a pool of experienced applicants, what motivation is there to take a chance on someone with none? (in the particular skill(s) you are looking for)
>>>>>>
>>>>>>IMHO, this is a red herring. The toughest part of software development is understanding the nature of the business problem and devising an appropriate solution. Writing the coede is the easy bit.
>>>>>
>>>>>If this were the case, that "writing code is the easy bit", re-writing VFP application that has been working for years and therefore already past the state of "understanding the nature of the business" to .NET would be "easy." Maybe it is/was for you but you can't say it is the same for everybody.
>>>>
>>>>But I think a lot of the problem with that can be related to the stuff VFP let you do ( some might say "get away with" and that we all did perhaps early on as self-taught developers. If you have an app that binds forms to data, the data is dbfs, the networking concurrency handling is dodgy, there is little design but a lot of 600 line methods etc ...
>>>>
>>>>But a well designed, n-tier VFP app against SQL using remote views or SPT ... pretty much as Marsha says. Once the business problem has been solved, i just find it liberating to have a whole lot of new tools to use to move the app to the next level.
>>>
>>>Ok, we agree to disagree there <g>
>>>
>>>What about reports in .NET world? I am in the process of creating a couple of reports in .NET using Crystal Reports. Even though I am using a pretty good book (written by Kevin Goff) I find that creating a report with Crystal Reports in .NET is 100-times more time consuming and complicated than in VFP.
>>
>>I'm not a big fan of Crystal and I agree that knocking off basic reports in VFP is certainly a lot easier for me that in .NET. I use Report Sharpshooter in .NET and am starting to get the hang of it. The learning curve seems a little steeper than vfp but it is certainly a lot more powerful, especially for anything really tricky.
>>
>>I won't kid you, there are times I want to throw .net against the wall and go back to my comfortable, safe and warm VFP/VFE world but that is usually when there is something very basic that is easy in VFP and more complicated in .net. Often that is because I am still trying to think vfp and program .net. ( like thinking in English when you are speaking Spanish <s> ) Those moments are getting fewer. and I'm finding there is a lot less frustration in reaching for stuff I've never done before because I pretty much learned a long time ago the limitations of VFP and trained myself not to want things I couldn't have. Now, I just assume if I've seen it done someplace it can be done with the tool I'm using That's kind of a cool new feeling.
>
>The discussion started with Marcia stating that coding .NET is "easy". Creating reports is part of coding. And we already agree that it ain't so <g>.

But we can agree doin' what you already know how to do is easy and doin' what you don't know how to do *yet* ain't <s>

>And how come you didn't tell me that Crystal sucks before I invested the past 3 weeks in learning how to use it? <g>

Probably because I am so inherently shy and insecure and reluctant to give an opinion on anything <bg>