Hi tamar,

>>I personally never did buy any VFP book myself, never subscribed to a VFP magazine, never visited a conference, yet I do regard myself as a reasonable VFP developer.

>And, to some extent, then, it's people like you who make it unprofitable to publish VFP books.

Certainly true.

>Do you really believe that you wouldn't have gotten US$50 value from, say, KiloFox? How much would you have to learn from a book to have it pay for itself?

I really don't know. I surely am not a reader in a sense that I'd like to read a book from cover to cover. I really like technical manuals which contain a wealth of information at itself (a commonly overlooked thing).

I've got a strong opinion myself and like to try everything myself and don't like other to tell me what to do and how. It is something that I've got to find out myself. I've got a pretty long history in VFP that goes back to the early 90's and have experience on OOP in other languages than VFP.

If I really want to do something that I cannot find out inmediately the UT and other resources are my best bet. The UT IMO is the best learning book I've ever met. The search functionalities and the thousands of hours spend up here learned me more than any book I've read before. The great community also is able to discuss best practises unlike books which only tells a story from the mind of the writer, which might not your best fit. Reading a book is one directional while the UT is bidirectional communication.

To be honest, the VFP books, magazines I've seen (Some of my colleages do subscribe) did not convince me I should buy them or subscribe. Much of what is in there could be found here on the UT or elsewhere on the web.

Something that also plays a part in this is that I find it too clumsy to buy books. If I need information I need it right now, I don't want to go through the trouble to buy and wait for three weeks go into town etc..

But I forgot to mention that I'm a subscriber of the UT magazine, because it is cheap and easy accessible, so I won't feel ripped off when I find not much info in there for me. Of course the MSDN library is invaluable for a VFP developer.

IOW, I don't have the feeling I'm missing valuable information without buying VFP books or subscribing to let's say foxtalk or advisor. I'm pretty comfortable with the way I can access VFP literature via the internet, fast and cheap. In fact I don't care so much about cheap, but fast is a real requirement (cut and past from a hardcopy book is somewhat troublesome). This is the reason I find online books or technical articles way more important than hardcopied books or magazines.

Walter,