Harold,

I am just beginning to look at .NET and so far it looks good. (Anybody remember Pascal, "strong typing" and "data abstraction"?) But I have to agree with you on the other points. Although there is this great commununity of developers and some good third party tools that haven't yet fallen away, there are also lots of problems.

I have been beating my head against the wall named "Crystal Reports" for the last 9 months because the VFP report generator is inadequate for 21st century development and CR seems to be the only real alternative. Trouble is, Crystal Decisions has dropped support for VFP, so if I can't show that a problem exists in VB, C++ or Access, they believe I am the problem. (Unless perhaps you have a LOT more influence than I do as a small, independent developer or can afford $200/CR bug.)

I have had several potential clients that went out and bought Access because of MS hype. When they discovered it wasn't as easy to develop a robust app as they expected, they wanted me to do it for them in Access. I've lost most of these potential clients because I am not an Access guru and they didn't want to hear about VFP. They believe Access is "the" standard for MS and that if I develop an app in Access for them they can easily fix their own problems and make their own improvements. Where did they get that idea? From Microsoft!

It's frustrating, man.

...Jim

>Tom:
>
>I've been learning .NET over the past few months and I have found it to be a great development environment. Handling data, tool integration, productivity can be just as great with .NET as with VFP. I've been using Fox since 1985, wrote the WebRad book, so I have a decent background in it. But the sad fact is, MS in not so subtle ways, has made VFP irrelavent. Nobody in corporations even knows it exists and if you have to go into a job and start from scratch to educate them on the merits, you'll have a tough road ahead of you.
>
>VFP is not immune from the same problems that cause a "death march" in any other language.In absolute numbers you hear about less horror stories because there are so few users of VFP. But proportionally, I am sure the rate is the same as in any other environment.
>
>Harold