Hello Cristof,

Thanks for your question. I think this would clear further my arguments.

>Hi Jess,
>
>>I never said "develop all the time from scratch." Mike knows it. I even said I salute the guy who did framework out of several frameworks. Try to review the thread, my first statement says that "you can use VFP framework as the based..." and suddenly Mike reacted and blown everything beyond perspective. The topic did'nt say "Is VFE a good framework?" It is a general question about framework and I did answered it in general.
>
>OK, many of your other statements sound like (or can be understand like): Don't buy a commercial framework, they are expensive, you don't need them and you make yourself dependent on the manufacturer. If you didn't meant it that way, that's great. Therefore let me ask you a question:
>
>If someone needs a framework, is it better
>
>a) to buy one or more commercial frameworks, study them and make modification to one of them or combine several in order to adjust them to one's needs, or

This is a lot better, why?

1. The developer shall be guided on the application of VFP OOP as it is vital, important thing to be understand especially on the part of new comers. IMHO, frameworks do not totally explain the intricacies of OOP. In frameworks, the OOP has been applied but its explanation is doubtful. That's why if a developer wanted to be in depth in VFP programming and buy a framework, he should understand and study the architecture behind.
2. We do not know the life span of commercial framework owning companies, and so the developer creates dependency on himself or themselves and not on others. As I have said to Jim Booth, dependency is not bad at all, but oftentimes, the developer tend to confine on what is packaged on the other product thus he/she stops applying his/her ideas as it is boring and difficult to know the nitty gritty of other's code. Dependency on others creates comfort and therefore the developer stops stretching his potential and work beyond the comfort zone.
3. New comers are becoming in depth into real programming intricacies.

>b) to ignore commercial frameworks and start writing one's own framework?

This happened to us but not ignored commercial frameworks. We did not modified commercial framework, we just studied the UI, how it works and apply some on our own. For the sake of argument, this is costly maybe, but the intangibles are terrific on the part of developers and the company.

There are always underlying argument on the following situations:

Car Manufacturer to Car Manufacturer (competition)
Car Manufacturer to Car Users (sales)

Developer to Developer (competition)
Developer to End-User (sales)

We sold products not based on other ideas but because of its uniqueness.

We are developers, not end-users. We have variety of ways and tools to create quality software. 'Yours' maybe a lot better than 'Ours', but it's the same argument, we sold 'ours' because its looks and works different from 'yours'.