>You will likely receive a lot of recommendations on Takenote, which is Jim Booth's school. One that I heartily recommend. They have a "take out" set of books (paperback) with a CDROM of assignments, code, etc. That course is priced at around $500 or so. I have used it in training new developers.
>The problem is that it will just really scratch the surface of VFP development, and will leave the student relying on practical experience to increase skills.


Um - TakeNote is Jim Duffy's business, and yes, he does sell self-study courseware or "workbooks." Jim Booth starred in some videos for AppDev. I hear they're good but I haven't seen them.


>Second, is a relativey new Book, by Cindy and Evan (Hey Evan, I got my autographed copy!) on VFP certification. I mention it here not so much to shove that new staff right into certification, but there is a tremendous amount of good resources on COM, OLE, and all those other acronyms that enable VFP to talk to other data as well as it's own database tables. Trust me, the certification exam is a COM certification much more than a FoxPro one.


Thanks for mentioning our book. I just want to make it clear that we make no attempt to "teach" VFP in our book, but rather to review concepts covered on the exams. As you mention below we do provide lists of resources for those who are weak in the specific areas,



>These two books with the resources contained in them, will bridge a great gap in assisting those DOS developers to see how VFP works, and to use it in a practical way.
>
>The risk in not training them in the Visual version is that you will end up with the 2.5 programs in VFP clothing, which will run, but will be a performance dog.


You are absolutely right, while data design is similar from FPW to VFP, OOP is a whole new animal. Moving from thinking procedurally to thinking OOP is a difficult big step. That's where Jim Duffy helped me immensely.


>There has been much conversation about "converting" those legacy applications, however, with experience, I strongly recommend a revised design plan, and completely rewriting in the Visual platform. You will find this much faster and more solid than trying to use conversion wizards and patched code.


Me too, and everyone else who's opinion I respect makes a similar recommendation.