Good comments Ed.

If I understand your comments correctly, I'd like to reflect.

I don't think anyone has suffered from being 'shielded' from basic Windows principles and practices. If anyone has suffered, it's of their own undoing. If anyone wants to learn, they can. You're proof of this. You're a sharp guy who understands the technical issues of several tools and platform hooks.

As far as being 'shielded', it might seem so, but there is a good reason. Cross platform. Core Fox source code runs on DOS, Mac, UNIX, and Windows. We had to come up with a common code base to target these platforms. Hence no Windows windows, the offsreen bitmap, etc. The reason why VFP is nativelty unaware of the event loop, Windows handles, and standard Windows interfaces, is because FoxPro has been around longer than the Windows we know today.

We are trying to make it better. Keep the feedback coming!

Dave

>>>They have to be to escape the brain-damaging crutches imposed by the language. A simple test - what percentage of VFP developers know what in the context of a process or a thread, the concept of a handle represents, as opposed to a token or an id? I'd venture to guess that the percentage is vanishingly small, especially when compared to people developing in C++ or Java. The typical VFP programmer isn't aware of what the differences are, and won't lift a finger to learn it unless jabbed repeatedly with a powerful cattleprod. The lack of initiative on the part of the VFP developer community creates the need for 'backwards compatibility'. How much hue and cry came from the BASIC developers when BASIC transiteds to VB, and gave up a whole lot of 'backwards compatibility' in the process.
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>>Ed,
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>>Interesting.
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>>However, does that knowledge impute any sort of superiority in terms of being necessary for daily productivity? For example, by removing the need to know all that stuff you enable the "tool user" (ie. developer) to be more productive. How much productivity would be gained by this do you think?
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>I think that the VFP community has suffered as a whole from being 'shielded' from basic Windows principles and practices; by not understanding the basis of things like the event loop, Windows handles, and the panoply of standard Windows facilities and interfaces, the average VFP developer is at a loss when forced to play in the general WinApp environment. Even the concepts of things like threading are garbled by the use in VFP's documentation. And the result is that a lot of programmers fail to leverage what's there for our use.
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>>I think at some point a good developer reaches the point where they recognize that in addition to learning their tool of choice that they themselves are their own primary tool. As such they then become interested in books like "Code Complete" for example.
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>>But for the most experienced developers to gain their sense of self-worth by pointing out that others are not as superior as they are is IMO a huge dis-service to the community, no matter how satisfying it may be to point at others and laugh.
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>I don't laugh; at this point, I simply stop trying to offer my POV sooner.
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>>Each developer should take responsibility to enlarge their own abilities continually. Some are better and faster than others. Thos who are 'better' IMO have a greater responsibility to those who are not; to help them along.
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>>I am curious and perhaps you or John would know the answer.. Does the typical VB, C++ or other community have the same sense of community that the Fox community does? And, is it better or worse?
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>No, we have a strong developer community, but it lacks strong understanding of the sandbox we play in.
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>>Personally, I do NOT think VFP programmers are superior -or- inferior than other developers. I also do not think that proficiency levels of any sort impute any kind of superiority other than technical. I have seen many technically 'superior' developers make a tremendous mistake and attempt to garner for themselves a certain kind of moral superiority and that's sad IMO.
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>>Surely there's more to life than one's technical expertise... <g>
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>You mean the ability to perform walletectomies? ;-)