Sorry, Jim.

How can anyone who hasn't built, deployed, and versioned a serious .NET application be offering training classes?

This is just a question. Nothing personal, okay? Why does this simple straightforward and hopefully impersonal question strike a chord?

Similarly, how can anyone who hasn't built, deployed, and versioned a serious .NET application be writing books, articles, offering training classes, and more to the point, predicting the way forward for everyone?

How can a billionaire with too much money and time on his hands, someone who never had any insight into applications, or his company, which has the same attributes, suddenly develop this prescient insight into applications? Starting with zero successful frameworks developed, suddenly we are graced with the Ultimate Framework, available to all on MSDN, don't delay learning it.

The level of uncritical linear thinking is just amazing to me. Everyone seems to be in collegial self-agreement that this is the way everyone will want to be developing systems going forward. Even though nobody's actually developed anything with this yet.

I'm not saying it's not cool. I'm just saying, smart people, get a grip.

In the old days, development environments went through a development, maturation, and adoption process. Evolutionary and incremental improvement is the way all worthwhile things have grown. Now suddenly we have development environments that debut at the pinnacle of desireability in version 1 form. It's amazing what money invested in development but mostly promotion can make normally smart people just gush all over themselves.

If you still don't get it, come over to my office and I'll pull out all my MSDN newsletters since 1993 and we can look at all those colorful middle-page-spreads, object models since renamed, then abandoned, similarly gushed-over by apparently smart people who hadn't yet actually built anything with them either.

We've seen this movie before. It sucks. VFP 3 sucked. Customers I built applications for in VFP 3 are long gone, never too impressed with my abilities. That's anectdotal, but VFP 3 was immature, and I should have left it mostly in the box. Applications were built with it that never should have been built.

There is nothing new in any of this, of course...

**--** Steve


>Hi Steven,
>
>You were missed in Kansas City!
>
>>Conversely, my view is that VFP developers who do this are probably headed for a very crowded and captive space where returns will surely be lower than industry average.
>
>hmmmmm.... one of my concerns about the current state of VFP is the price that businesses have to pay for quality VFP developers. Don't get me wrong, I like the money we're making doing VFP work. My concern is that if I'm a businessman and I need to hire a programmer, I could hire two VB guys at $50/hour or one VFP guy at $100. Yeah, I know, it's impossible to compare VB and VFP developers, BUT the businessman will! Considering all things being equal, hmmmm... two programmers for the price on one... be it a wise business decision or not, take a guess which direction he's going to go.
>
>The laws of supply and demand are controlling the rates decent VFP developers are getting. I'd hate to see that demand slip because the price for talent is too high...
>
>>Not saying .NET isn't cool, just saying don't believe everything you see on TV.
>
>You mean George Foreman doesn't hand make everyone of those George Foreman Grillin' machines???? < g > Next you'll tell me that WWF wrestling is fake... come on Steven, get real. < vbg >
>
>>For the vast majority of people, avoiding the early pioneering costs is the better tactic, and this means not blindly thinking you have to act now because "time is on your side" or, worse, "while they still have work". That's a borderline unethical pronouncement,
>
>hmmmmm.... unethical pronouncement? That seems a bit over the top Steven. Is time on their side? I think so. Do you think that the number of .NET projects will continue to grow over time? I do. Do you think IT budgets will continue to grow unlimited? I don't. We know .NET will continue to gain mind and market share with developers. That being the case, sooner or later the number of .NET projects will surpass projects based on older technology. Makes sense to me to start looking at either .NET. I don't think Rod is telling people to drop everything they're doing and run to catch the .NET train. What I do think he's telling people is to keep an eye on the train schedule and so they don't get left behind.
>
>>What you are telling people is "Act Now!" before anyone can identify the .NET rookie mistakes. That's unconscionable.
>
>Again with the hmmmmmmm.... unconscionable? Was it unconscionable to tell FP 2.hard developers to switch over to VFP before the "gurus" could identify the rookie mistakes?? No, I don't think so. I recall many of our peers (me included) saying that VFP was the FoxPro of the future and that they should jump on the bandwagon. Were we right? I think we'll both agree that we were.
>
>>All this does is flock innocent people, people who respect your opinion, towards expensive and potentially client ruining escapades based on mediocre books, mediocre training,
>
>Hey, watch it there... we haven't even announced our VB.NET for VFP Developers training classes yet!! < g >