>>>>I find it amusing that so many people seem so threatened by what is just empirically good advice.
>>
>>OK, can you give me a few sample people or message id#s where people act threatened rather than bored?
>
>I'm starting to get the impression that some of this "good advice" is all about buying into their ".NET tools/courseware", or trying to get others to validate their decisions.
>
>My "advice" is, if one is going to learn .NET, they'd be better served learning the unadulterated stuff first as opposed to hiding behind a "framework" (or whatever).
>
>Odds are, the next ".NET employer" (if you're not doing this on your own) will have little interest in "your favorite framework/tool" (since they may have their own), or exclude you because you don't know the basics and can't program in "raw mode".
>
>I'm sure there will be more .NET frameworks in the future, but it will be from outfits with a lot more resources (and expertise in .NET) than ex-VFP coders tinkering away in their spare time.

Interesting. I took the completely opposite approach. A few years ago, when I was just starting to get into programming in VFP (and the first time I was programming "for real"), the very first thing I did was to buy a framework (MM's version 4.xx, I think). I also picked up a copy of Web Connect around the same time (2.xx). The learning curve was pretty steep since I was getting a crash coarse in VFP, OOP, web development, new frameworks, etc. However, I found I was able to be more productive earlier because of the frameworks. The very fact that they hide a lot of the complexity (ie. work around code for stuff that should have been easier to do in the first place) meant I could work on solving the business problems I was getting paid for, not figuring out things like how to make a grid highlight bar.

Of course, the downside of going that route was that I missed out on learning a lot of the nitty-gritty details of the language. (shrug) I think it was a good tradeoff. To be honest, I wasn't in a position to be able to spend a ton of time cutting my teeth writing "raw" code (and I shudder to think how bad that code would be). As I learned the framework, and traced through the code, I learned quite a bit about how to put systems together, and about all the goofy things the framework hid from me. I don't think it made me any less employable, and it made me a lot more valuable to my employer because I was producing useful applications instead of reinventing the wheel.

If you've got a lot of time to learn a new language, and don't need to produce applications in it, I'd say there is some value to learning things the hard way. However, if you're like me, and need to produce something >now< (that have a ton more functionality), frameworks are a great way to go (and learn).

Just my $.02