John,

Maybe because of my dutch origin, I've got tremendous trouble on figuring out what your message means.

I get the idea that we all should learn something else because there is no future in VFP ? I find that hard to believe. VFP 8 isn't out yet and because of its fast dataengine it is the most logical choice for data intensive and highly data driven applications. I don't see .NET change that.

I see however, the ever ongoing integration of other components. Large parts of .NET can be used from within VFP. Crystal Reports can be called from VFP, SQL-server can be used very easy from within VFP. IOW I see that in the future our applications more and more consist of a variaty of components.

Personally I don't see any reason to jump the VB.NET plane, If i'm going to need .NET features (I doubt I will in the near future), I might look at C# first.

More important I don't see the need to invest time in something that might be the future of developping applications. .NET might be fantastic for web services, I personally don't see a high demand for this kind of applications yet, ... and I doubt if there ever will.

Like many people, I can't invest time in learning things that I might need in the future. I only can invest time in things I need right now (Like CR 8.5, SQL-server 2000, WINAPI, COM/DCOM/COM++, etc). To me, these things are more important than learning the .NET framework right now because these technologies have proven themselves and do not go anywhere anytime soon.

If one time VFP might not be suitable anymore, I'll then decide what to do. Maybe at that stage there is a new technology replacing all the .NET hype: "Well did I save me some time by ignoring that hype !"

The future will tell: There are still programmers programming in COBOL and making lots of money. We'll cross the bridge if we come to it. It does not make sense to invest time in things you do not want to use anytime soon.


Walter,



>Too many people here will be thrown off becuae the author cited Fox in his list of legacy stuff.
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>Clearly....< s >
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>Most of us went through the exact process he describes - keeping up with our FPW bread-and-butter while transitioning to VFP, and we all find ourselves keeping up with our < insert any existing technology > bread-and-butter while transitioning to < insert any technology that we are about to learn >.
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>Ah... you, and a few others got the point....I was beginning to lose faith....
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>Personally, I'm busy trying to guess which technology area will give me the most career choices in my local area (or in the company I'm in now) in three years, and finding ways to gain practical experience in that technology (playing around may not be enough). The choice seems to be between learning another development tool (VB.NET, C#) or learning another database tool (SQL Server, Oracle).
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>Focusing on more career choices - that is a good foundation to base your decisions upon...
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>Since I'm going to have some opportunities to learn/use SQL Server in my current job, that seems to be the road to take.
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>You cannot go wrong with SQL Server. I just finished teaching a 5 day SQL Server DBA class - it was a lot of fun...
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>>Everyone here would be wise to carry out the same process. You're not preaching VB, you're preaching that we should carry out this process.
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>Correct. Thanks for having a clue!! < g >