>edward,
>as a new user i am sensing a pretty good-sized learning curve in store for me with VFP. since the microsoft documentation is fair at best do you think i should seek out some foxpro training or, is hacking away at it one problem at a time the best way to shorten this learning curve? i don't have much OOP experience. any advice/comments appreciated. thanks!

I don't think that special OO training is mandatory. You may have some problems because besides OO VFP also has alot of xbase background. However, it's all doable, so hack problems and use UT resources, as much as possible