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>That's what I have been doing so far. But I missed those buttons and all the other visual controls, though. So I started experimenting with WinForms, but something in the back of my head told me to ask you guys (and dolls..) for directions, to avoid starting in the wrong end.

I have my first application in production (+/-5 manmonths) in WinForms; It's the first thiing in decades that I did not develop in VFP. It took me some time to realise that it's a bad idea to try and rebuild what I thought was what made my framework in VFP strong. I used binding objects, dragged and dropped tables, I used tableadapters althought they told me not to. It's all very nice in the beginning, but if after some time, when you have to go back and change something, you wish you hadn't gone so "sophisticated". I'm slowly but surely replacing all that garbage with good old plain inline sql.

I also baseclassed the basic controls minimally. I guess I did the right thing but it's not really crucial and I think it's very dependent on your own taste. I agree with those who say that less is more in this context.

The big advantages of the .net ide is intellisense (before I worked in .net, I thought intellisense was for sissies, but you know better right?) It does mean that you will have to change the way you name your stuff. I did not do it, but I think greg adams (he links to a pluralsight course on methodology I think) is right, it is an important aspect to follow the right naming conventions, and lcIndex is a good example of what you should not do anymore.

As always, most of what you know is in books, what you don't know, you'll have to find out for yourself, would invest in Pluralsight and Lynda. You will see that those courses make a lot of sense.

I also discovered too late the incredible advantage of static routines. If you don't know what that is, well be sure you do, because it makes things sooo much simpler.

As always... KISS. As you don't know which technology you'll end up with, just use the basic building blocks, but refrain from drag and drop data, just go ADO.net and write your own sqls. It's a pâin, but after a while you'll find out that you write them as quickly as you did in VFP. You will problable want to have your sqlclass, that connects to the database, returns a scalar or a datatable, and reduces db access to instatiating it and passing it an sql string.

Ah and then there is the datagridview. I don't know you, but I frequently need to present my information and input in tabular form. If you thought the grid in VFP was perplexing, wait until you start working on the datagridview. That being said, it's great, but it takes one to know it. Forget everything you know about the vfp grid, and you'll probably master it faster than me.

With all the wrong decisions that I've made etc. I think it's a great development environment. Would not want to go back to VFP anymore, and it's true that you get great help here, I particularly was helped by Viv Phillips, Bonnie DEwitt and Gregory Adams, and others, hope I'm not forgetting anybody major.