Don't forget to factor where in the life cycle VFP is. Being able to get into the front door is a factor. Even if there was a lot to learn, if I can't find work using the product, does it really matter...???

As for the way you have characterized the 'art' of programming, those are good points. It is not rocket science.

As for what I think people should do, they should make their own decisions. However, those decisions should be informed ones. If folks want to stay with VFP and invest in VFP, more power to them. I don't think it is a prudent idea, but that is my opinion, one that you are free to disagree with. Of course, the perceptions of the world, the world outside of VFP has pretty much written the product off. This is not news. IMO, it does not make sense to invest 1 penny more than what one has to.

Of course, if you have a job and are new to VFP and it is a requirement that you get training or that you need training of some sort, as long as it is cost justifiable, I say go for it.

Some will say that I preach doom and gloom of VFP. The book on VFP was written long ago by people other than myself. I am merely the messenger of a message that you don't like. Nonetheless, the points are valid. Look at the job market. Try submitting a Fox article to one of the major periodicals. If the rest of the world thinks VFP is irrelevant, regardless of what you or anybody else thinks, it is irrelevant. Of course, your individual milage may very. But, in the aggregate, if you stir it all up, you end up with a sad story.

Just have a plan.... and most importantly, don't avoid looking at and investigating dotNET because some folks up here preach FUD regarding dotNET.



>>Whether I spend zero dollars or 10,000 dollars, my knowledge about VFP or what I can do with VFP is the same.
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>Either you're stating you know everything about VFP, or that you are incapable of learning any more. I'll assume the former...in which case, your thesis works for you, but not for folks that haven't learned, say, OOP, or how to use remote views. Your 'opportunity cost of zero' assertion only stands for people who know everything or cant learn...a tiny minority at best.
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>Shall we deem this point 'irrelevant' too?
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>You've proven to yourself that .net is the way to go. Good for you. However, before you go telling other people what THEY should do, you should expend a bit of effort on discovering who these people are and what they build. Remember, there are many, many people in this world who are not you.
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>I look at it this way: Nothing any of us are doing is rocket science...we build and query databases, put together chunks of text, and schlep them around to varous computers by various means. It's not like we're streaming video, writing games, or building AI for mars rovers. We are builders of bean counting machines.
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>Microsoft is in the business of selling software, and as such has a vested interest in re-inventing the way we build bean counters. I think they have come to the realization that if they get it right, they are out of business...who would need to buy the next version? The big push for (and impending failure of) My Services is illustrative of the impact of this realization. They want to be the mother of all ASP's...but nobody trusts ASP's (MS least of all) with their data. My Services be an expensive, embarrasing failure for them.
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>It has been my experience that 90% of all applications run on a LAN, with some communication between other apps on the same lan or other sites. As it stands, I can easily build and distribute complex vfp applications in a 6 meg package that will run well on any MS OS back to windows 95, on Pentium 150 or better computers. The entire installation can live in it's own folder, so I don't have to worry about hosing somebody's comp with my dlls. I can quickly and reliably run my fat client apps on a 10/100/1gb lan, without installing anything but a shortcut on the clients. If I need to, I can easily scale up to SQL server. I am in complete control of every aspect of production, deployment and maintenance. Li'l ol' me.
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>If the application needs to talk to remote sites or other applications, I can easily use something like Web Connection to do this.
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>In summary, VFP apps are small, fast, stable, portable, scalable, and easy to build, deploy and maintain.
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>.Net, in its current incarnation, looks to be none of these things, with the arguable exeption of stable. It was conceived and built during the .com boom, and labors under the assumptions that companies will spend megabucks on thousands of man hours and equipment in order to participate in an internet driven 'new economy'. The very name of the product is indicative of MS's desire to cash in on the hype.
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>.Net requires the correct version of a 20 meg runtime to so much as say "hello world". As it evolves, there will doubtless be many versions of the runtime floating around...a potential nightmare for distribution.
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>It requires some pretty spiffy hardware to run decently on, too. Yes, hardware is relatively cheap, but I do not see myself explaining to clients that they need to replace their perfectly functional hardware so that I can build something in .net that I could have built in VFP and achieved the same or better performance on the existing hardware.
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>As far as ease of use goes, how 'bout that documentation, eh? Pfaugh.
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>There is a potential for increased profit for the contract developer here...you can bill for a helluva lot more hours for a given project if you use .net instead of VFP, and sell a bunch of new hardware in the bargain. It's gonna be a hard sell though...the internet hype is gone, and you will be bidding against folks like me that can provide the same functionality at a fraction of your cost.
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>At this place and time, .Net looks to be a solution without a problem. As time passes, .Net is refined, and the level of hardware out there improves, this could well change. For now, I see little benefit in investing in .Net...even at an 'opportunity cost of zero'. I personally try to provide the maximum value to my clients for what they pay me. Until .Net allows me to provide more value that VFP, I see no reason to mess with it, other than idle curiosity.