>We are a FoxPro 9 shop that needs to move to C# or we could lose our contract with our one customer.
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>I know C#, but am a beginner. I've written a number of ASP.NET apps and my first one was in 2003 and I wrote my own Data Access Layer using old school command object, parameters, datasets, datatables and datarows. It was a lot of work.
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>Sine then I've used Mere Mortals and have enjoyed the fact that the BO Generator writes the DAL and the fields in tables become strongly typed class fields/properties and the Intellisense kicks in.
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>And I've been studying the new EF in .NET Framework 4.0.
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>So, in our programming meeting yesterday I was demo'ing LINQPad and the whole concept of LINQ. Well, practically everyone flipped out saying it was too hard and that they wouldn't have time to learn it. Well, for starters none of them even know C#, so they've got a huge learning curve ahead of them regardless.
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>Then the manager stated that we wouldn't use LINQ and instead we would resort to old school using SQL. Well, the manager doesn't know C# either, but his philosophy was "we all need to be able to support each other's applications" and we need to keep it simple enough to that if you get hit by a bus... I call this the least common denominator mode of team programming.
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>But, I truly believe that old school "SQL" with command objects, datasets, datatables and datarows and all that code is way more difficult than EF and LINQ. In EF you set your new values and then call SaveChanges. I don't know what's easier than that.
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>Opinions?

IMHO (and I haven't been working with C# lately), if you can learn EF and go with it, go for it. PluralSight has very good courses on LINQ and EF, so you may check this single course or get monthly subscription and learn it. I watched these courses a while back and unfortunately forgot a lot since then.

BTW, for me ADO.NET is quite simple. You write the DL classes once, your write stored procedures and then you will be invoking the helper functions passing your SP name and parameters.