Preface: This is IMHO...!!!

(Pulling off the gloves)

Professionalism and a team attitude, for one. Willingness to think outside of the VFP box. A lack of understanding that the solution is *not* always "how can I do it in Fox?" but sometimes "how can I best do it?".

Most experienced VFP developers that I know can bitch-slap VB developers in terms of an almost intuitive feel for how an application should be structured. But they fail to architect it well because they can't get out of the box.

Turnout for the VFP certification tests has been far less than hoped. Why? Beats me, but there was one opportunity to "get with the program" that was missed. How many more can we ignore and expect to be respected by MS and everyone else?

The Fox community, sadly, is still recovering from the FP to VFP conversion. That's pretty lame. Lamer still is the "man in the high castle" attitude in which Fox developers allow their markets to shrink because they don't feel a need to expand their toolsets and, thus, individual market presense. This is one area in which VB developers have an advantage....they never suffered from the illusion that VB could do everything: They always had to turn to external tools for data storage, et al. So the more experienced of their folks developed the proper approach to systems development.

VFP is a great tool, but it's not the only tool. People have to take those years of experience and realize that they bring incredible systems development experience to the table without leaning on, sometimes, the crutch of Fox.

People have to answer for themselves the question: Am I a VFP programmer or systems developer/consultant? If the answer is #1, then you have no right to bitch about market shares or disrespect or whatnot --- find an employer and do your coding without worrying about those issues. Otherwise, get your head out of your ass and start realizing that good client solutions requires more than a good understanding of VFP or trying to retrofit it to all situations.

'Nuff said....whew :-)

>When comparing us to other developer or technology groups, what is the VFP community missing? Here is what we have:
>
>1) 3 print magazines
>2) good tech support forums
>3) news feed
>4) wiki
>5) conferences
>6) scheduled web chats