>>>A good part of the reason that the VFP board is so successful is that VFP has a strong community--stronger than any other language you're likely to use. People in this community are more willing to share knowlege and help others.
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>>I have often wondered why Foxheads were like this. Did some early gurus set the tone? Is the type development prone to sharing? Is there something about FoxPro and VFP that make it easy or necessary to share? Is it because a lot of VFP developers work by themselves or in small shops?

>I've often heard Tom Rettig being credited with setting the tone for the community early on. There may be some truth to that because Tom didn't start using Fox until FoxPro 2.0, and I don't remember there being much of a community in the Foxbase days (at least I wasn't aware of it).

I think a lot had to due with just with the way Fox 'grew up'. There was not a virtual community that I was aware of back in the Foxbase days, but Dr Dave, and his people in Perrysburg did make the Fox conferences ( in Toledo no less ) very special in bringing people together and providing an excellant product.

You had all sorts of xbase languages competing at the time, and as Foxbase started to pull ahead, AshtonTate comes in with the lawsuit. When the developer comunity sees the product they love being threaten so... it tends to unify them in many ways.

Then you have the Fox Software / Microsoft merger ( aka aquisition ). Everyone is scared, "What's MS gonna do to us?", and MS marketing and employees really don't help matters much. Again.. a reason for developers to unify.

The more clients you have, the better apps you write, the more viable the language that is so dear to many of us. So of course... I'll help you in any way I can.

Anthony Letts