>>I had never met JVP in person until the past few weeks. During that time I have attended two .NET conferences at which he has spoken. Probably to the surprise of some here, he is entirely pleasant and amiable in person. His presentations (it was the same one both times so I only attended once) were knowledgeable and informative. He was angry at the end of his time on the FoxForum but that was quite a while ago. His talk was on dependency injection and I learned a lot about it.
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>At a JQuery developer conference in Boston a bit over a year ago, Steve Black bumped into JVP, and they ended up having a great time chatting with each other in person. While I and others have had their share of threads with JVP here on the UT in years past, he is one of the most fun guys from the Fox community to hang out with in person. For those of you who who go back to the Fox Forum days on CompuServe, there was a guy named Jeff Winchell who was legendary in aggravating Fox developers there, but who was also very nice to be around in person.
First of all, thank you for saying that. There are some here who have distorted images of all of them.
I only met Jeff once, when he was teaching a class in downtown Chicago. He seemed OK.
Steve is IMO one of the most brilliant guys who ever took up FoxPro. There is a very small group of people I consider the best FoxPro developers ever and you are both in it. I do not believe in false idolatry but an honest compliment is a pleasure to give. You were in your longhair phase, working for Flash, but the Microsofties sought you out like you were one of their own. Which before long you were.
The other guy I can't forget from that trip, sadly, is Tom Rettig. He also respected you greatly and had the full respect of the MS team. His presentation on the DBC, which had just been announced, was masterful. He was wearing a pair of glasses and looked like a professor. The last time I saw him was very late at night at a party in Norm's room,Norm asleep in the other room. The door open in the other room with the breeze coming in the open screen door. You were probably the only sober person there. It was a nice mellow moment and I didn't appreciate it enough at the time.
If you didn't hear, Tom West died last week. He reminded me of you.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/28/business/28west.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=tom%20west&st=cseMaybe you should emulate Tracy Kidder more than Tom West. The account you posted of the Northridge earthquake was beyond belief. It had that you-are-here feeling that can't be faked. Absolutely effing spectacular.. The coffee cups that didn't break? You can't fake that.
