Hi Aaron,

the DD gets persisted in the peristence layer, if I understand these things correctly. That's why I volunteered to do the port, to get an understanding.

I agree with the idea that VFP's tools are what make the difference, largely. Probably still a 2:1 difference as I think your estimate implies, which is close to Carl's estimate of 1.5:1.

One difference as I see is is that VFP seems to be made to have add-on's. Not that an API doesn't exist in .NET; but it's a pain to use. Which of course was my point to Ken when asking for some help in that area, in the way of an improved framework for tools in .NET.

And yes, there's lots of great stuff in .NET, and there is tremendous support from vendors. Most vendors, however, do not themselves know what "good" is, because they haven't experienced really good, i.e., haven't worked with the sets of tools in VFP. I just keep making noises, hoping vendors, including MS, will listen.

Hank

>Hi Hank,
>
>>> Frank, Pertti, and I are creating an xCase feed into the MM.NET persistence layer for Kevin
>
>Do you mean you are working on using the xCase model as the core for the DD ?
>
>>> And if you had to do it in .NET how long do you think it would have taken? My guess is a minimum of 5X as much time; which if it meant increasing the team size to meet time-frame considerations, would have meant probably 10X as many person-hours
>
>You are correct that to write it all again in .NET would be around x10 the man hours but I think this is more a factor of not having the right third party add-ons for .NET at this stage. Without the VFP add-ons our last version would have gone from 4 man years to approximately 20 - 30 years. The reason it only took 4 man years was largely due to the add-ons rather than VFP itself.
>
>While there is no doubt VFP's higher level language is quicker (and more friendly) to produce results, .NET's disadvantage in this area is more than counteracted with the scale of the capabilities offered by .NET.
>
>My main issue with .NET isn't so much .NET itself, rather the add-on tool market is still maturing and hasn't reached the same level as with VFP - but I think it will come. When VFP first appeared it didn't have xCase support or a proper DD out of the box (and still doesn't without add-ons) and .NET is in the same position.
>
>It is always a difficult thing to call, but I would suspect that if we had to develop our application again without the use of third party add-ons, a VFP out of the box development would take around the same time as a .NET version. There would be areas were each development product would leave the other behind, but overall I think the timescale would balance out. However, if you did the same and allowed add-on tools, then the VFP development would be much faster simply because it has the tools available and .NET currently does not.
>
>There is such a huge market for .NET that the tools will come.
>
>Regards,
>
>Aaron