Jim,

Actually I think its rather easy to describe what I believe to be the root of these conversations. A year or so ago the Los Angeles Times had an article entitled "The Dark Side of Information Technology". What the article discussed was the effects of constantly changing technology on the professionals who work in the field. An example of what was discussed in the article were comments from software engineers lamenting the fact that they have to read so much tech material that they had no time to read fiction anymore.

One of the strongest comments made in the article was that a large percentage of IT professionals change professions after the age of 30 due to the constant demands this profession places on your free time. I don't know about you, but I know its too late for me to be thinking about changing careers.

I know I'm amazed when I here discussions about reading material from some of our more knowledgable members like Jim Booth, Ed Rauh, etc. I was visiting Hentenwerke the other day. Whil has a page lisiting the favorites from his personal library. These folks have commited a hugh amount of time to stay at the forefront of their profession.

I think as an independent developer, its even more important to stay abreast. I was involved in a perfect example of this a couple weeks ago. I work for a very small firm now, with a very large client. The client is a very large entertainment company. One of the systems we developed is to track movie performance. I was in their staff meeting a couple weeks ago, where a new web system was demoed. The web system is for tracking promotional materials for those same movies. The current version of the web software has film information hardcoded because they didn't have time to develop a simple way to get information from our system. I immediately mentioned that we could develop COM components that could return any piece of data from our system to the web page. The current system is written in VFP 5. Because of my COM component statement, VFP 7 was immediately ordered.

I haven't done too much with COM, but am really looking forward to the opportunity. I have followed many of the discussions here that discussed early binding vs. late binding, single threaded, multi threaded, apartment threading, etc, to get just a cursory understanding. I ran out, on my own, and purchased a couple books on COM. I expect to understand COM fundamentals much more in depth shortly. And I look it as a plus, that the books I just purchased are about VB and COM. I am looking forward to increasing my VB as well as COM knowledge.

PF

>Perry,
>
>It seems that we are in need of something that is the opposite of FUD. Until now fact(s) negated FUD, but now we have reached the point where, .NET remaining a non-product, people are extolling its grand munificence and bountiful future as if it is the only way, truth and light.
>
>The best I can come up with on short notice is "BAD" - "Blind Aacceptance and Devotion" but I'm sure the more skilled can come up with a more appropriate one.
>
>Interesting how our society is now working. Anyone questioning or criticizing something that doesn't yet exist is said to be blinded by FUD about that thing yet those who embrace the non-product are on the side of the angels.
>
>It was only last week that .NET was universally (almost) acclaimed as FUD itself. MS must be congratulated for this quick and thorough turnaround.
>
>While I've got your attention, let me also comment on working as a corporate developer versus as a contractor.
>
>When I worked in the corporate environment it was part of the job description that my skills would be kept updated with somewhere betwee 2-6 weeks training per year on the latest relevant tools. Later it became my job to ensure the same for my staffs.
>As a contractor it is my own responsibility, hampered of course by limited time and the double-whammy of course costs coupled with no income during the course.
>
>Jim
>
>
> >Ed,
>>
>>After thinking about this for a while, I don't even think FUD is the right word to describe what is being voiced here.
>>
>>First of all, anyone, and I mean anyone with any common sense would see be able to look at a list of jobs these days and see that VFP is way down on the list, if it even makes the list at all. This is a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor. As of right now, everyone is on equal footing with .Net. I don't even buy the argument that people don't have home computers to be able to learn something new. If someone has enough time to post messages here, they should be able to find the time to learn something new.
>>
>>Second, I've always been a corporate developer. I've learned whatever was put in front of me. If I was told the next project was to be in Oracle, so be it. You've mentioned you are now a manager of an IT group. I would think high on the list of abilities of people in your group, is the ability to be flexible. It tells me something about an IT person, if the don't want to learn new skills. I seriously question their abilities in areas, including their supposed area of expertise. For example, I would have serious doubts about a VFP programmers expertise in building COM dlls, writing TSQL or PLSQL to be able to access data on a Enterprise DB backend.
>>
>>Unfortunately, I've worked in a couple places in the last couple years where there's always an older guy, sitting by himself in a corner cube. He's the one with all the knowledge of some old Cobol system. In some cases they've been happy in their lot in life. In others they can't figure out why they've been passed over for promotion countless times.
>>
>>And to close, I wish I could come up with a pithy closing comment. BBC America is having a best of weekend. Maybe I can catch something on "Father Ted" or "Ab Fab". We shall see.
>>
>>PF
>>
>>>>>Jess,
>>>>>
>>>>>A few questions.
>>>>>
>>>>>> Majority of my colleagues here want VFP to be .Net language.
>>>>>
>>>>>First question, what is a .NET language? Is it a language that can consume .NET services? If so then VFP is already one.
>>>>
>>>>It should compile with CLR..
>>>
>>>That's nonesense - you're saying that VFP should limit its behavior to the behaviors in the CLR environment. Say goodbye to everything in VFP that violates the intepreter model behind CLR. Or are you saying at the CLR should contain all the native constructs of VFP? If so, why is there a need for anything other than VFP?
>>>
>>>NOTHING compiles with CLR. The CLR-compatible language compiler emits CLR p-code, which contains a very narrow set of behaviors. If you wish to treat the p-code of the CLR as the basis of building an interpreter, you end up creating something close to a beaded threaded interpreter model of language behavior, similar in philosophy to Forth. You essentially have to take all of the optimization going on inside of the VFP native interpreter that right now makes no concessions to the requirements of the codeset of a virtual machine code, and rethink them in terms of CLR expression. At the very least, with multiple levels of interpretation, the level of the VFP interpreter, which handles things like macroexecution, name resolution, name indirection, loose typing, free declaration of variables and properties, not to mention the embedded data language, and now rather than execute native code, reemit CLR p-code, which must be interpreted. We end up bulky and slow, and unable to
>>>offer any advantage over other CLR languages, because our interpreter model is at wide variance with the CLR interpretation model.
>>>
>>>If I get a vote, I'd vote NO. But then, I'd like to sacrifice a lot of things that we perpetuate supporting backwards compatibility for streamlining; I've been told by people who know a lot more than I do that as long as our underlying interpreter behaviors stay much the same, we can keep considerably more backwards compatibility with adding great bulk (IOW, some of the new services are built on the code behind some backwards compatible features, so there's low cost to the backwards compatibility) but that all changes when we have to switch to think in terms of the CLR model of behavior.
>>>
>>>Personally, I trust the judgement of people like Ken Levy and Calvin Hsia and Gene Goldhammer, who are determining what directions we can move in and keep the uniqueness of VFP, more than the wishes of a few, terrified developers who see the world is moving to a new model of computing, that might leave them behind, but won't change their mind-set out of the world of ten years ago.
>>>
>>>Face it, Jess, you have to either evolve or die. Which is a personal decision.
>>>
>>>I don't make the rules, I just play the game.