I get what you are saying and yes, I do "desktop" apps ( providing desktop means LAN, WAN, HTTPS, VPN against SQL Server backends)

I like .NET for all that but wouldn't know if it is the best solution for iPads, phones, or even web stuff.

But my point was that if one is going to spend a lot of time getting up to speed on something beyond VFP, I found that 2 things were very attractive in .NET - an IDE that was the subject of vast MS resources and third party support, and the ability to actually Google for answers when VFP support is only, maybe, sometimes available on UT from a continually diminishing pool of experienced users.

I am continually thrilled at how many resources there are for quickly finding answers to development challenges in .NEt and I can't imagine seeking out some obscure language a guy wrote in Uzbekhistan (however brilliant, technically elegant and "fox friendly") if he and his brother and six guys on the internet were the only people who'd ever heard of it <g>

I see a lot of discussion here about not leaving Fox until one finds a technically brilliant language that doesn't involve a lot of typing <s> Not sure those should be the criteria. I program mostly in VB .net - surely the most verbose of the CLR langauges - and I'm constantly surprised at how little typing I do to get so much code.


>>>I am 100% certain that you are wrong.
>>
>>And I'm 100% *you* are right <bg>
>
>No dispute here on that account...
>
>>Between this kind of stuff and all the hoo ha over finding "foxlike" converters, extenders, compilers etc I am astounded at the sheer amount of energy that goes into evaluating, testing, reading about etc ways to think one is going to keep doing what one did 15 years ago. If half the energy were just invested in learning .NET, Java or pretty much anything that we know works, millions are using and is here to stay, one could just move on and go back to solving business problems (profitably) with software.
>
>I read the above that you are still creating desktop apps, now in Dotnet. Agreed that this is about as easy as with vfp nowadays
>(but with highliy different areas where the beef is), for me reaching out to big iron backends from any kind of desktop app was one
>kind of learning new things, small forays into synching with hand-held data aquisition the other. Cloud development might be a third frontierm not sure about that. But with any of these areas dotnet, while clearly giving superior support than vfp, is IMHO not the best bet.
>
>> I only got serious about .NET two or three years ago but I can honestly say I can do more, faster and am having more fun than I ever did in VFP. I get continuing to use Fox as one always did if the boss requires it, you have to maintain your old stuff etc (I do that too) but if it involves learning *anything* new, I think the investment of time is better put into something - well, new. <s> (and I know you agree with all this and have taken a similar approach)
>
>Most clearly this is on the smartphone front: currently no real market share and Winmobile7 has earned... less than total praise on the things known as of today. Silverlight is a distinct possibility, but java is quite strong over here and on many machine levels. And the fun for me is still more on the dynamic side of things (be it vfp or Ironpython) not only using factories but running truly dynamic code (while doable in java and dotnet, this is not the ease and joy as in the other languages...)
>
>regards
>
>thomas