>I had hoped to have finished with this, but ...
>
>There seem to be lots of "experts" & people who have been around a long time, who keep telling me that it's wonderful here & I'm mistaken. As always - those that are part of the problem, denying there is a problem.
>
>It would be interesting to hear the views of anyone else who has been here for around as long as I have, i.e. not long. Am I wrong in feeling that the place is very cliquey, not so welcoming to newcomers & intolerant of views that do not match those of the "inner sanctum".

I've been (mostly) lurking and (occasionally) posting my attempts at solutions for not quite a year.

When I first started getting paid to program I had access to an in-house guru. During my orientation session with him I was told that "Page 99" should be an expected response. I've seen a lot of posts here with "Lookup XXX in help" as an answer.

While I can understand someone feeling that that is rather condescending, I think it's a good answer. I know that I learned a lot more by having to read the manual, figure it out, and then figure out how to apply what I had just learned than I ever did by taking someone's suggested code and putting it into my application.

I have seen (and probably posted) questions which made me wonder how anybody who needed to ask that question could possibly be getting paid as a FoxPro programmer. I have never seen my reaction verbalized by any of the "Inner sanctum." The closest was, after about 10 posts, "Why don't you try some of this rather than having us do your work for you." (or something to that effect).

I have never gotten the impression that the experts in this forum wish the rest of us would go play somewhere else.