>It would matter a lot. It's not a matter of switching to a new language, it's the interoperability with other tools and the OS that is of concern.

Sorry John, I was guilty of oversimplification, what I was trying to get at is that we are already seeing a need to expand our knowledge beyond VFP-centrism. If VFP were to change/disappear because of this split, this is no different than the VB absorption/supercedence arguments that were heavily debated here recently.

In short, what someone said in one of those arguments makes sense to me: "VFP isn't the first language I've learned, and it won't be the last".

>And I would challenge the notion that if one writes VFP code, one can mosey on over to a whole new environment. I know a whole helluva lot of coders who still haven't migrated from 2.6 to VFP. And VFPers who intuitively know VFP but can't do much else.

I guess what I meant by this is that mosey is a relative term. Programming is not *necessarily* tool dependent. YES the nuances that make many of you up here experts and the rest of us merely competent (see the comment I made concerning the MCSD cert the other day) applies. You guys who know all the ins and out of VFP would lose that in another language.

Maybe in some zen sort of way, I am at an advantage here. I have only been writing VFP code for about 1.5 years. I feel fluent, but not expert, so I tend to use more general constructs and techniques. I read books and follow mailing lists where the developers use smalltalk, java and C++, and I often try to apply the knowledge and techniques in VFP, even though it not necessarily the "VFP" way to do it.

I follow the UT aggressively because this is where I will learn the techniques to write the code and gain the experience that leads to the nuances that you so correctly pointed out make one an expert. Since VFP is what I do, this is where I spend a lot of time.

In short, jumping to another language doesn't frighten me too much, because I haven't been in this one too long and I am doing well here, plus I don't think that, regardless of the reason, it will happen so quickly that I won't have time to migrate (I may anwyay).

Best,
Bill