>> I haven’t really used VB but from what I have been told some stuff, like abstract factory, is easier to pull off in VB than C#. A breeze in VFP, I have yet to do the abstract factory in C# nor have I come across anyone who has. (A challenge to all?)

In my experience, all our factories are data-driven -- we pass in a token, and out comes an object whose configuration comes from tables.

If you don't have a handy standard data engine, then either
1) the factory implementations need to be hard-coded, or
2) data structures (and hence potential community-wide compatibility) are left to the implementation, or
3) you use the Registry, which is arguably fundamentally bozo.

Either way, that makes things *much* harder (more code-intensive and subject to implementation/installation/configuration hassles).

Fundamentally, a convenient implicit local data engine changes everything. In my view this alone give VFP an incredible edge. I'll never, ever again build a non-data-driven application. Most VFP veterans would agree with this view, and non-VFPers have no idea, not-a-clue, what they're missing.

.NET V1 changes nothing in this single, vital respect. Alan, if you're reading, I notice that the strength of any software community seems directly and inexorably correlated with the strength of the community's metadata system.

Or, to put another way perhaps, the fragmentation of any software community seems inversely correlated with the strength of the community's metadata system. Could Ghandi create a consolidated C++ community? No. But with VFP it happens almost naturally, even spontaneously.

If there's truth to any of this, then what are the strengths and weaknesses of the .NET / VS.NET metadata system? I think this matters a lot...

**--** Steve