>True Story: By the time I figured it out, within weeks I got the VFP 3 beta. I loaded it up and created a form. Tried to add a button to skip a record but couldn't figure out where to put the SHOW GETS. Got that figured out, then tried to figure out how to map my SCATTER MEMVAR variables to controls the right way. Got that figured out then bought a copy of "VFP 3.0 Codebook" -- read a bit of that and then went out and got plastered because I was convinced I was doomed as a Fox guy. Hehe.


JIH, not sure the best place.

I sent this email to a guy name Bill Joyce in northern Virginia who was quoted in an article in the Washington Post:

************************
Hello, I enjoyed the article "Certification Can Boost Earnings..." in last Sundays Washington Post and found it quite valuable. One sentence attributed to you got my goat, though: "If, for example, someone wants to get out of working with Foxpro or Paradox and move to Visual Basic, they could get the MCSD certification..."

Now, I happen to believe that the future belongs to Object-Oriented languages like FoxPro which offer class hierarchies, inheritance, polymorphism, and encapsulation plus embedded SQL.

In the same Horizons section of the Post there is an article on UML and the importance of "round-trip engineering". This is a feature of Visual FoxPro and Visual Modeler (aka Rational Rose) which are included in the Microsoft Visual Studio.

Do you really believe that it would be smarter for me to ignore all this and focus my career on a "flatland" language like Visual Basic?

Peter Robinson

************************

He called me back today to say that he definitely didn't believe that VFP was a "dead-end." He said he was reporting on what he sees in the DC area, that for every shop using FoxPro there are 30 using VB. It occured to me during our chat that a major reason for that is that VB is just easier to learn. That idea has been reflected in this thread and I think it is right on.

Now it remains to us foxes to prove that where there is pain, there is gain. Let's show 'em!

Peter

PS. (just for grins)
The first Bill Joyce in McLean, VA that I sent my email to turned out to work for the meat board. Following is his response:

>For Peter Robinson
>Around here we are very much into hierarchies and inheritance (especially
>large ones from old aunts). None of us, however, are into polymorphism. It's
>just not natural. A few of us like sheep, but that sort of comes with the
>job. As for Rational Rose one of the guys reckons he met her once, but then
>he also claims to have met Madonna.
>
>In terms of how you focus your career, we discussed this over morning
>coffee, but failed to reach a consensus of where you should go next. Some of
>my colleagues were not very polite I'm afraid. One guy thought you should go
>into banking, or at least that's what I thought he said. We doubt you would
>have the qualifications necessary to join the team here as a dead sheep
>salesman.
>William Joyce