Marc,

I disagree that the lack of VFP books on the book store shelves is indicative of anything but the marketing decisions of the bookstore owners. There are alot of good books on VFP.

You are correct that reading books on OO design issues are very valuable. The learning curve of vfp is really two curves, one is the VFP language and that is not alot different from 2.x. There are alot of enhancements to be learned like buffering and the dbc etc.. but the underlying language is an enhancement of 2.x. The other curve is OO and that will not be covered in a book about VFP per se, but in books about OO.

IMO, when learning a new methodolgy of doing what I have been doing for years it is very helpful to read alot of different authors. This allows me to see the issue from different perspectives and make the learning more complete.

On the issue of OO I have found David Taylor the best author for a FIRST book, his writing style is clear and understandable and he doesn't go too deep into the theory. After David I would recomment Yourdan as the second author to look for as he takes you farhter than Taylor but still isn't as deep as Booch or Jacobsen. After digesting Taylor and Yourdan then, and only then, would I suggest a newcomer dive into Booch and Jacobsen.

As for desing patterns by teh gang of four, well the book is indespensible, but shouldn't be undertaken until one has a t least a superficial grasp on the basics of OO.

I found Savanah's book helpful but not really authoritative. The book was much more valuable for someone who knows OO and is trying to get the drift of the VFP model, it doesn't really teach OO itself.

In terms of VFP books I would recomment Whil Hentzen's book Programming Visual FoxPro as the first book for folks making a move from 2.x. Whil does a very good job of taking the reader from 2.x style to the VFP style.

The Hacker's Guide is a must have reference bood but it is not a learning tool for VFP.

I think the book I co-authored is a relatively good one too, Visual FoxPro 3.0 Unleashed, of course I am biased on that one.

CodeBook 3.0 is really the documentation for the CodeBook framework and it should be viewed as that and not a book to learn VFP from.

I have found that with VFP, as with any development tool, the only way to really learn from books is to read alot of them. Some of them are execellent and others less good, but every book has something in it to be learned.