>The day came when I had to make the decision about replacing VFP. My marketplace, payment processors, banks, etc., made the decision for me and it is . . .
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> . . . . . . . . (open the envelope please) . . . . . . . .
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>C# / Silverlight / Winforms / SQL Server

If you learn Silverlight you pretty much learn WPF - why bother with Winforms ?

>Recommendations appreciated as to the most effective way to start climbing the learning curve?
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>I have 1 to 2 years before I have to be fully productive, but would like to do something productive while learning. For that I have an old dBase-V application (yes dBase, circa 1985) I can migrate. It's fairly simple and much of what I do can be applied to payment processing. In the meantime, if (when) I do something stupid with the old app it won't be the end of the world.