>The difficulty for me is separating current hype from current realities.

Bingo Jeff! Likewise here, and sort of the reason I started this thread... I wanted to take a realistic look and what the latest VS news means to me and decide which way I want to go with my skills.

>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.

I know that frustration... drove me to jump ship and go independent.

>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.

ahhh but dont you hear that sound? < ka-ching > All the more reason for developers to stay on top of their game IMHO. No offense to my fellow females but being able to keep up with the M$ train is what separates the men from the boys in this field. And I for one plan on coming in to pick up where the boys fail and do the job right... since I dont collect a regular paycheck anymore, I consider this my own personal mutated form of job security < smirk >

>Keeping all this in prospective, the majority of companies I have seen are years behind current technologies not even taking VS.Net into account.

Excellent point Jeff, yet another reality check that's important to keep in mind in regards to the latest VS.Net hype.

>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.

Yet another good point, and I really like this "implementation lag" phrase. I've seen that lag personally with both developers/past co-workers and clients. But do you really think that "lag" will work it's way up the ladder to M$??? The only way I see that happening is if Visual Studio sales drop off substantially, which is where the M$ marketing train picks up the slack. We as developers dont dare stop buying into the latest technology, that jeopardize out livlihood. And if we buy into, we will inadvertantly go out and sell it to our customers.

more thoughts?