John,

>...I view things from the perspective of whether a VFP developer can afford to not at least plan for the move. Even if one does not feel that he will deliver applications in .Net for 12 months, the time to plan is now. Can you imagine the development talent firms will be looking for in 12 months? I think they will be looking for .Net talent.

Very good points, John. Those with VFP OOP experience are in a great position to be very valuable to companies moving to .NET -- if they take the time now to learn it. Combine that with knowledge of data design and system analysis and throw in some SQL Server experience and you've got a good future regardless of the language.

Add to that the ability to wrap VFP stuff in Web Services callable from .NET and the possibilities for bridging the gap and being valuable to even more companies increase.

I agree that anyone chosing to ignore .NET is really rolling the dice on a big gamble. Some, however, would say that the big gamble is to put all your eggs into the .NET basket. Considering that Microsoft is betting the company on it, it seems like a pretty good gamble, really -- but we don't have to put all the eggs there yet.

At CoDe Magazine, we have wrestled the past year with how to provide coverage of "the new stuff" while continuing to support the VFP community with in-depth technical articles. We are still adjusting as we go, but have concluded that one of the best ways to support the VFP community is to explain .NET in-depth and show how VFP can work alongside it when possible, in addition to general architectural topics and a small number of VFP-only articles.

The most feedback I have heard so far from VFP people is along these lines: "I like it because you challenge us with new concepts." I think that is the bottom line story here... let yourself be challenged to learn something new every day, and you'll never be left in the duststorm of regrets.