>This is really a silly argument. Inheritance is a nice feature, but you can survive with out it. When JAVA was developed there were no backward compatibility issues. The developers were free to begin from scratch. If inheritance were of no value, they would have left it out.
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>I think MS purposely left inheritance out of VB to keep the language easy to learn. Inheritance can sometimes be more trouble than it worth. It takes a long time before you can realize the true benefit of this feature.

Charlie,
I dont think it is a silly argument, for the simple reason it also takes a long time to realize where Inheritance can get you into trouble. Plus, as a VFP only developer, prior to this discussion I was someone who always squirmed at the thought of not having inheritance in VB. If I can clearly see how the common perception that "in VB I'll have to copy/paste everything I would normally inherit in VFP" I'll be a better developer no matter which tool I'm using. Plus too, I think the fact that Markus and John made their points on this thread equally well, only seems natural to step outside of a VFP centric world and explore this issue from this angle.