>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?

So the argument is down to whether you use classic ADO.NET dataset/datatables or use some ORM model (EF is not the only option) ?
Someone posted a link recently (Craig?) which made a pretty good job of hi-lighting the potential shortcomings of any ORM approach and is well worth reading...
But I. like you, think it's very possible to make a longer list of the shortcomings of *not* doing so. Regardless of whether your organisation opts for EF or not your associates are being naive in thinking they will become proficient .NET programmers without a good understanding (and use) of Linq in its many forms. It's not just Linq to Entities - Linq to objects, Linq to XML, Linq- to- whatever -they will need to understand it and make use of it.

Oh, and I think " In EF you set your new values and then call SaveChanges" is a bit of an over simplification. You will still need to deal with conflict resolution etc.......

P.S - While you're at it : Pitch for WPF over WinForms