>Check out this bit of Gartner group goodness:
>
>http://gartner6.gartnerweb.com/public/static/hotc/hcil0714001.html
>

Don't freak out. If you are primarily a VFP developer, then what you know about COM is not immediately changing all that much. Lots of low level COM stuff- interfaces, IDL, etc are shifting, but a VB or VFP developer doesn't really deal with that stuff anyway. If you've played with the SOAP toolkit, you've seen how your normal everyday COM object is wrapped to run remotely using XML, and you had to do little more than use the Wizard to create your SDL and listener. The technology sounds scary, but once you get into it, it's not so bad, and I have faith that this .net stuff will be a similar experience.

If you have a basic understanding of stateless programming, and uncoupled objects, then the new technology will be learning little more than the new tools. The basic rules of programming are not changing- we're just being given tools that make our lives easier.

Just remember that very few people are ahead of you in the .net game so far- it's new to all of us.

Rumors of COM's demise have been greatly exaggerated.