Malcolm, (great first name BTW, its my middle)

I would also vote for CodeMine. I've worked both with VFE, and CM and so far it has taken me a lot longer to hit the wall with CM than it did with VFE.

I have almost always used some kind of framework, and even after trying to build my own, I found the learning curve was less steep to use a framework developed by someone a heck of a lot smarter than I am. I will have to say, using CodeMine has reinforced many of the concepts of OOP, and so it has been a wonderful learning experience (even if I am driving the tech support person a little crazy). -- Larry