Ken,

I am an independant consultant who does spend 8 - 10 hours a day on client issues. But I also see as a part of what I need to do as keeping my skills up. Client projects are fairly focused and if that was all I did all day the breadth of my experience would be quite limited.

I allocate 3 to 4 hours a day to keeping myself up to date. During this time I read books, journals, prepare presentations for conferences, write articles, work on books and spend time on the thread and in the newsgroups.

Most of that stuff is fairly self explanatory as to how it expands my knowledge and experience base, but how does the thread fit in? Well, the questions that I research and answer on the thread often involved areas of VFP that I have not encountered in my client work, so it forces me to expand my knowledge beyond what the current project might expose me to. A good deal of the stuff on the thread is answered from past experience. I read most of the messages because I see the thread as another technical journal, allbeit one with very practical issues discussed. I have often found the answer to a question of my own on the thread and I have even encountered questions in my work that were previously answered on the thread.

Granted, I am a person who would be doing the same things with my time even if I won the lottery and was not concerned with money. But, I feel strongly that this discipline of software development is a professional endeavor and as such it requires of its participants to stay up to date with the industry and the technical advancements. That doesn't happen by accident, but requires that some number of hours per week be allocated to keeping up to date. Spending some of those hours on the thread is time very well spent in keeping up with what is new.