>>I'm glad I don't have to exist as a consultant (with the required amount of hours) and can work a 9:00 to 5:00 for a company doing VFP work while learning .NET ... I guess for now ... until I hit an equivalent level of expertise with .NET ... I appreciate the cocoon of steady employment in a environment I've mastered.<<

That is certainly the plus side of employment. If all VFP developers who worked for someone else were in that situation I don't think there would be much problem - or nearly as much fear.

As a consultant I do indeed have to put in a lot of my own time to get up on the new stuff. The upside is, I can pretty much do it at my own pace as my client base in long-standing and are quite happy with VFP solutions for as long as I choose to provide them. Nobody is going to ever look at a "resume" or tell me what tool I should use. But I would probably get bored if I didn't have something new to learn - I'm an old guy and had a number of lives before I ever saw a computer (oddly though some of them involved learning new languages as if your life might depend on it. ;-)

I'm finding the MM .NET framework to be a nice way to ease into this while going through the experience with a group of friends with whom I share a common history. I don't think it is really protecting me from anything, it just gives me a context in which to look at a lot of C# code that has already been integrated into design patterns with which I am familiar.

I think it will be about two years before I start using it seriously, mainly because I have learned the best way to make money with new technologies is to let the tool builders build - and improve - good tools and then get very good at using them. I agree with you totally on standing in bewilderment at those who scoff at frameworks... especially stuff like VFE, MM etc where you have all the source code and can not only learn from it but and customize it in any fashion you like. (my god, in VFE there are even tools to help subclass and customize the design time wizards.)

Like you, I know a lot of the players in the tool-builder ranks, have for a long time, and I would agree that one of the things that seems to distinguish them is a generousity of spirit. I think some people are missing that a lot of what those folks are saying now about exploring other (.NET) technologies really is advice offered in that same spirit.