Hi Rod,

Now this is more along your alley, something I can agree with. Heck, if your message below is a summary of what John's been saying all this time I would even go out on a limb and say I agree 100%! :) Your previous message sounded more like "burn down the house and run for the hills with your copy of VS.Net under your arm!" kind of a thing.

FWIW I don't think anyone will deny the fact that the VFP market has been in decline for a few years, longer than the current economic slowdown. But at the same time I believe we can all see that things are getting better "circa" Ken Levy, especially with this public beta of VFP8 and the effort to gather attention to it and to VFP overall.

The availability of VFP books from whichever publisher also helps a great deal and is very welcomed. I remember back in VFP5 there were only a handful of books to choose from, with one of the better choices being the one you and John co-authored. The situation is very different now with top-notch quality books from hentzenwerke on a variety of topics.

About this VFP8 book from QUE, it would seem that they are going forward with it since the QUE site has it listed for sale and in stock! Of course this is inaccurate, but also a few days ago Menachem Bazian posted a message to the effect that "we cannot confirm or deny the existence of such a book.." (this is not what MB wrote, we're just seeing the artist representation for illustrative purposes < g >)

Just my .02


>Should you learn .NET ASAP : YES! You should also learn SQL Server or Oracle and probably how to do web dev as well. I believe that people need to improve their skillsets and learn how to apply new technogies.
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>As for where you saw me. You must mean the VFP user group. Allright you caught me<g>. From what I recall I was a speaker at the UG a couple of months ago as well.
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>I hope I dont give the impression that I have abandoned VFP. I HAVE NOT! VFP is a GREAT development tool that I continue to use. Do I do other work in other tools. ABSOLUTELY! I haven't touched a .DBF file in years instead opting for SQL Server. I have also spent considerable time working in .NET technologies. As most people know I have used a number of other tools for years Cold Fusion being one.
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>I'm going to make this a long reply because I dont have time ot answer the 20+ messages I received yesterday.
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>For one I dont discount Whil's books for their quality. I think that the quality of most of the Hentzenwerke books is pretty good. As a matter fact I contributed to one of them. I use Whil's books as an example because lots of other products have books an B&N and Borders and VFP is MIA from their shelves. From Tamar's response I can see how authors would like to write for Whil because the deals he cuts are pretty good for the authors. I like to hear that.
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>My original reponse to this thread was in regards to OUR VFP 8 book that we were negotiating with QUE. We pulled the plug because of OUR market analysis. When you decide to take on a project of that magnitude you need to make sure your ROI is good enough to justify the effort. In OUR case it was not. I am not trying to be a doomsayer here. The market for VFP work is not that great. Are people still happy with VFP ? Yes! Was I incorrect in saying people are ignoring the trends. Not too sure here. I might be wrong in assuming people ignore what is going on. Accoring do John Ryan he assumes I think people are luddites. I don't think this at all. I know alot of these people and respect their opinions. Do I think some people paint a more rosy picture than the reality justifies ? In some cases yes. Has the economy affected the demand for work. YES! However, the VFP market has been in a steady decline even before the economy went south. I guess a good question would be to ask yourselves: If
>you had a cousin, brother, sister graduating from college today would you recommend that they take a job using VFP or would you recommend thet invest time in some other technology ?
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>In regards to what JVP's motivation is: I don't know sometimes what his motivation really is. All I know is JVP really cares about his message and and cares about other developers and what will happen in their future. JVP's problem is that he lets certain people bait him and he gets off course sometimes. FWIW, his message is a good one it's just the delivery that has a few problems.
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>Anyway, sorry you got the long winded post. I do like this type of conversation as I feel it is productive for the community.