I can't argue with you Perry. That's the way it goes in the IT world. We always have to study something. Wether new development language, new OS...

It's just that in VFP's case it's sadder than with many other development environment. We're not talking about a small business. It's MS that's working on it. They have it all if needed. The money, the marketing, the sales force...

But it did'nt happen. Why? This has been debated for a long time so enough said on that topic.

What I did learn over this though is that it's big mistake to rely on products made by only one company. Because if or when that company decides to pull the plug on that product it puts your job in jeopardy.

So when I move to .Net it'll be with C#. That way if they decide to pull the plug on it then I'll have made a move in the right direction and jump to Java or C++. They can't pull the plug on C++ because others makes compilers and Java seems to be in a relatively good position overall.


>Denis,
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>Several years ago, at the start of the dotcom revolution, there was an article in the Los Angeles Times about the dark side of working in IT. At the time, jobs were plentiful, so the dark side revolved around IT workers complaining about the issues like the need to constantly study, work long hours when necessary and other things that reduced free time hours outside of work. One quote was about "not remembering the last time I read a novel", because all he had time to read was tech manuals.
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>The article went on to mention how many in the industry suffered burnout and moved on to other careers. In particular they mentioned how the ranks of developers got thinned out as developers approached the age of 40.
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>I find it very interesting that I find the average age of attendees at VFP events I attend to skew much older then other events, such as VB or .Net. This is just the nature of the beast. We have all chosen a profession that seems to reinvent itself every 5 years or so.
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>To me it is an equation with 2 possible answers. If I want to continue in the industry, I must reinvent myself whenever necessary. Or get out of the industry. I know if I wish to remain in the industry, I should welcome work done by folks like Markus to help me to further myself. I started working with personal computers in the early 80s. When I started working with PCs in corporations I worked in several places where there was an old guy sitting in the corner that no one hardly ever talked to. His job was to maintain some mainframe code. I knew then that I would never be comfortable ending up like him.
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>So I don't quite understand everyone's frustration. If someone is really that good a developer, then his business knowledge skills should help him to acquire new skills. As I think its far easier to write not quite optimized code that produces the correct result, then be able to write highly optimized SQL statements that produce totally useless numbers because the developer has so little an understanding of business rules.
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>I think many would be surprised at how far they could get if they just spend their energy learning new tools instead of trying to defend their old toolset.
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>PF
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>>So they send that developer a message after many years that all the investment he put in this product will go in the garbage because they decided that it won't be included in their new invention. Invention that is apparently the best thing since sliced bread.
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>>So that developer will have to start over with that new thing. If at least the new thing would have been invented to let him do things he could'nt do with the development language he used. It looks like he won't really gain much by learning that new thing. In the end it'll probably be only a matter of doing things differently.
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>>So John you tell me that you don't understand the frustrations of a developer in that situation?