Jim,

1) My own personal opinion is that the MDSN docs for .NET are OK. That is just my opinion. It's a decent reference and it also has some walkthroughs that were helpful for me. But there's no question that I'd still be lost were it not for some people on the .NET forum, a few books, and about a dozen websites.

I guess some of this boils down to expecatations. I expect the docs to tell me syntax, what properties exist, maybe a few simple examples, etc. I look elsewhere for issues of application. I'd rather talk to people who have been through it a few times. I've said it before and I'll say it again - you can't put a pricetag (nor you can replicate in docs) the type of assistance that's been provided by people over on the .NET forum and other sites.

If others say the docs are terrible, I certainly won't dispute their claims.

2) In the last year, five forum members with .NET experience have corrected .NET statements/assertions from one member. The fundamental issue was not that the one member didn't have practical experience with .NET - the main issue was that the assertions were either incorrect or very misleading. Again, as this is a technical forum, the assertions were called into question and often refuted.

A by-product of the discussion was the fact that the member making assertions had no production experience with .NET - and the assertions showed a consistent pattern of under-stating .NET's capabilities. In that case, I really don't think it's necessary to ask point-blank if personal biases exist. The pattern basically spoke for itself.

The reactions would have been very different if things had been posted as questions..."how do I do XYZ?", as opposed to assertions that XYZ can't be done or can't be done efficiently. If I came up here and claimed that "Fox can't do XYZ", I'd EXPECT to get kicked around.

It is my personal opinion that those who have worked in this industry for a long time are sometimes not comfortable in the position of asking what they believe to be 'novice' questions on new tools. Instead, they sometimes promote a questionable method of evaluating a new product that is based too much on specific knowledge of existing tools.

.NET has a big learning curve - much more so than the learning curve for Fox. It takes time and sometimes a few iterations of building things before one can really become knowledgeable enough to make technical assessments.

Kevin