Jeff,

I concur with your 'take' on this stuff and would only add the notion that we developers also, as we age, also become more succeptible to this as well. It does become more difficult to keep up as tme goes by. Like you, I thoroughly enjoy the challenges, yet we are IMO starting to get to the point where we need to make sure that this wisdom is passed along. That's also one reason places like the UT will always flourish; there are enough folks needing that experience that they will find a place to get it.

Besides, they make pointy-haired bosses at an incredible rate. <g>

Best,

DD



>Part of our job, as developers, is to embrace new technologies - constantly riding the curve, like a wild bronco just trying to stay on. It's akin to doctors having to keep abreast of new treatments to serve their patients.
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>I, for one, love it. MS makes sure that we will always have new toys - it is also what keeps them in business.
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>The difficulty for me is separating current hype from current realities. Another aspect of this is separating web development from non-web development and the rate at which that will change (forwards, backwards, or the same).
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>The current reality for the large companies (some public) I have worked for is incremental change - that's right! The last thing they want to do is embrace this new stuff at the rate it's being pumped out. This has been frustrating for me with respect to migrating huge FPW 2.5/2.6 apps to VFP. And the failed-over budgeted-never finished-flakey VB/SQL Server apps - forget about it - they are all over the place. Likewise, I have seen some pretty nasty VFP apps.
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>Keeping all this in prospective, the majority of companies I have seen are years behind current technologies not even taking VS.Net into account. Just as we are struggling to keep the edge, they are more so, but for different reasons.
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>Of course, there are those whose livelihoods depend on the hype - the media, rag publishers, writers, etc.. And maybe the words hype / frenzy are not accurate. Maybe a term like Implimentation-Lag is more fitting. I may be very wrong on this, but I think that implimentation-lag is becomimg a huge problem - for developers, clients, and MS eventually.
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>>>VFP has never been in the VS shell...which is just fine with me...I *HATE* the VS development shell. Unfortunately, I think that we'll see VFP folded in...prolly not in 7.0, but maybe 8.0 or 9.0.
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>>With the looks of things, even if it doesnt get folded into the common development shell, it seems to me the common tools like win forms and perhaps other web services will get us using the common development shell whether we like it or not, in order to create parts & pieces that we'll use from within VFP.
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>>>As for not using CLR, anything is speculation at this point. But, if it doesn't support it until, say, 8.0, is it really that big of deal???
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>>For large & complex enterprise apps I think it would be a big deal. For the sake of bragging rights (after all us fox folks are typically a territorial bunch for the most part right?< g >) I think it's also a big deal... but can I live without it initially? Sure... but all the more reason to get off the fox fence and start learning more than just basics with one of the varsity team tools.
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>>Think about this... we've been seeing glimpses of VFP7 for a quite a long time now. Why havent we gotten it yet? VS 7 was delayed. CLR is pretty massive change IMHO for all the other dev tools, no wonder they delayed it. Now look at how long it's taken us to even get a promise of VFP OLEDB provider. Are we really gonna keep the majority of out skilled set focused on a minor play tool thats constantly coming into the game late always guessing if we're going to get to play with the big boys? I dont know about you but it's starting to get old.
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>>>OK..so VB is getting inheritance. How long did it take Fox developers to figure out inheritance. In fact, I'll bet the majority of Fox developers don't use inheritance correctly. Those of us that do, will be light years (ok..only 5) ahead of the VB guys in terms of understand how to really make use of it.
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>>Funny you should bring up inheritance... Not only is VB getting inheritance, it's getting it in a bigger and better way from the way I see it. Multiple language inheritance... that's awesome news! And here's the irony, we were shown VFP getting intellisense in a bigger & better way than VB. And now VB is getting inheritance in a bigger and better way. < g > figures.