Fernando,

Let's talk about this a little bit...

First, your quote from my column in the Sep/Oct issue of CoDe:

>...To be honest David Stevenson wrote: "Why would I want any Visual FoxPro code in my .NET application...", and I assumed myself to be already a "converted" one wondering what should I do with my expertise in VFP...

I'm sorry if that line gave you an identity crisis. :-) However, the brief way you quoted me might lead people to think that I am disparaging Visual Foxpro, so let's put the quote in context. At that point in the article, I AM writing to .NET developers, as the previous paragraph indicates ("those .NET developers who are willing to think outside the .NET box"), and I follow the line you quoted with a positive statement and some examples about how using the VFP Toolkit for .NET can result in productivity:

As we focus this issue on .NET Languages, let me point out a great cross-cultural opportunity for those .NET developers who are willing to think outside the .NET box. The Visual FoxPro Toolkit for .NET, released recently on the GotDotNet website, is a collection of over 200 commands and functions that are effectively added to your .NET lauguage of choice just by referencing the VFPToolkitNET.dll, which is written in managed .NET code and does not require a VFP runtime.

"Why would I want any Visual FoxPro code in my .NET application?" you might ask. The answer is simple: productivity.

The Toolkit contains some incredibly useful functions from VFP that are not native to .NET, such as STREXTRACT, which can save you lines and lines of code when you need to pull text out from between two user-defined delimiter strings, such as you might face in a screen-scraping scenario. Another example is STRTOFILE, which converts a string into a file in just one line of code. You can find the toolkit freely available for download at www.gotdotnet.com/team/vfp.

Now, let's move on to your comments about CoDe being a .NET magazine...

>Interesting what you said. About a week ago I received my first CoDe issue. There are many folks that can be found here in the VFP forum of UT (Rod Paddock, JVP, Dan LeClair, David Stevenson etc) writing editorials or articles and what seemed to me it was a .NET magazine (just browsed it), as you well pointed out: no FoxPro...
>What will happen to FoxPro when some of the most outstanding folks in our community just talk dotNet?

First, thanks for including me in "some of the most outstanding folks in our community". :-) Sadly, I have not been able to participate as much recently in the UT discussions, due to a heavy load of projects related to the growth and expansion of CoDe, although I am here lurking, skimming, and taking the pulse of the community on almost a daily basis.

From the very beginning, CoDe has been focused on a broad range of Microsoft development technologies and has never been a one-language magazine. Since EPS Software, publishers of CoDe, was/were/is/are so involved with the VFP community, the logical place to start in building circulation for the magazine was with mailing lists and conferences of VFP developers. FoxPro Advisor and FoxTalk already provided VFP-only coverage and CoDe was positioned to cover more advanced topics of interest that branched out beyond just pure VFP.

For example, we have included extensive coverage of XML and XSL, COM+ Events and Queued Components, BizTalk Server, SQL Server, SOAP and Web Services, and Microsoft's emerging development focus, .NET. Also we have regularly included more "generic" developer topics, such as Requirements and Use Cases, UML Modeling, Testing Strategies, Customer relations, and so forth.

Out of a circulation base of 30,000, VFP developers make up approximately one-third of the total, which still means that CoDe delivers a VFP audience to VFP advertisers just as effectively as any other magazine. However, the growth in our circulation is not coming predominately from VFP developers, and our editorial mix will continue to evolve as our audience changes. We plan to hit 50,000 circulation during the upcoming year, and would be very happy to have large numbers of VFP developers in that group of new subscribers, but that is not the trend we are seeing at the moment when we look at the surveys filled out by new subscribers.

For VFP developers who are willing to look outside the VFP box, there are some cool things happening on the other side of the fence, and I encourage you to begin learning how to use VFP with .NET and not just apart from it. Regardless of your choice in that area, we will do our best to continue providing general interest articles that will help you become a better developer, no matter what language you use.

In fact, everyone here should subscribe immediately to CoDe or go grab a copy from your local Barnes and Noble (please) so you can read my entire column, which is titled, "Are You More Than Your Language?". :-)