The question was couched from the standpoint of how I evaluated the Hacker's Guide. I evaluate books based on the value they provide to me, how often I refer to them. That said, I gave the HG an F. For you, it may be different. Remember, it is my opinion, nothing more and nothing less.

However, If I look at the VFP community as a whole, the HG, I think, is a pretty valuable resource. However, one has to ask the question of why it is so valuable. Is it because it is the only place to find such info? Or, is it because it is the only place people know about? I suspect it is the latter since most folks do not take advantage of MSDN. Then again, that may be semantics. Regardless of how something becomes of value, it is just that, a valuable resource.

Again, what I offer as an opinion, is in all liklihood, not politically correct. And for that reason alone, regardless of how much merit my POV may contain, I will get flamed...



>>If you ask me to assign a grade based on how much I refer to the book, I would give it an F. Seriously, I do not refer to the Hacker's guide one iota. There are scores of information about the XBase aspects of VFP. I have no use for that type of information. Further, most of the issues I tend to deal with are contained in the MSDN Knowledge Base. It is important I define why I have reached the conclusion I have since my feelings may appear to be a bit biased.
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>John, I disagree with this pretty strongly, not because it deals with things that I don't know about in detail, where I need to experiment, read, bang my head against the wall for a half hour and eventually yelp for help, but because it does give a more complete and correct documentation of things that are simply wrong in he VFP docs. It's not perfect, but it's a worthwhile resource. And reality is that while an awful large percentage of the VFP world is not making the cut to the future of VFP and VS, it's a book that is going to be used by a ton of people who are nowusing it formaking things like SBT work.
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>These aren't the future VFP MCSDs, but they are a sizable workforce.
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>>And, of what is there, do we really need it? Please, do we really need info on _dos, _mac, _windows, or _unix? Go ahead, ask yourself the question, how often do you actually refer to the HG? Flip through the book, how much stuff is irrelevant today? I am sure there are folks that rely on it. However, my guess is that many of the folks who say it is a "must have" book, it rarely gets opened - like most other books that people buy...< s >... Why, because that is the politically correct thing to say...
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>As long as they still work, and all the VFP doc says is 'for backwards compatibility', yes - you can still have code using these constructs that break, or would need to be explained if for no other reason than to tell you what they're supposed to do and can support. I want to see a dramatic reduction in the backwards compatibility, but until it happens, some reference needs to address these items. I don't know what your experience is, but a significant number of calls I get are for people who've finally shifted to VFP, and now "the code she no work".
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>>For many VFP developers however, I think the book is a good investment. If it helps you solve one problem, I suppose you could make the argument that the purchase price was worth it. However, could the problem have been solved through the MSDN KB? Maybe that is irrelevant, I don't know...
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>>I am amazed at the number of folks who don't utilized MSDN on the web. It is free and is one of the best resources out there. With that said, it is important to remember that the HG is NOT the only place to find the issues related to VFP. When you get down to it, all they did was annotate the help file. Don't get me wrong, I think that it is a valuable service. However, I could think of dozens of folks that could have done just as good, if not a better job.
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>I agree here - especially since an awful lot of people who qualify for the free 1 year MSDN library subscription don't take advantage of it. I don't understand this, especially for people who've applied SP3 - while a separate .CHM covering the SP3 issues shipped with SP3, the MSDN incorporated the two files in the October MSDN...