Kevin,
VFP is one of those do-it-all programming languages too..
>>I wish someone would start a seminar/website called "Why Convert?"!
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>I know it can be very frustrating to be at the top of your game in a particular language/toolset and then have a brand new technology like .NET come along. When Rick Strahl and I first began to learn .NET we felt like we went from gurus to complete idiots in two seconds flat--that can be completely demoralizing. But I remember feeling very much the same way when Visual FoxPro was released. I had to ask myself whether it was worth it to stay in FoxPro 2.6 or make the leap to VFP knowing that I would have to rewrite applications to do so.
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>It's a great question--has Microsoft introduced the .NET technologies simply because they want to make more money, or is there a technological advantage that makes .NET worth looking at? We all know Microsoft DOES want to make a lot of money <s>, but there ARE very real, tangible benefits found in .NET. Here are a few of them:
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• I think one of the biggest advantages of .NET is the reward you get for your learning curve. Although the .NET curve may be steep at first, once you've "arrived" you can create Windows applications, Web applications, Web Services, and Smart Device (PocketPC/Windows CE) applications. In the next version of SQL Server you'll even be able to write stored procedures in C# or VB .NET. In contrast, with Visual Studio 6 you have to learn one language / toolset for Windows, another language / toolset for Web, and yet another language / toolset for smart devices.
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• Strongly typed languages! Because Visual FoxPro is weakly typed, you must run your code to find most of your bugs. In contrast, C# and VB .NET are strongly typed languages, which means you specify the data type (integer, string, DateTime) of variables, method parameters, method return values, etc, which allows you to find most of your errors at compile time. If you've never worked with strongly typed laneguages I recommend checking out this feature. It's phenomenal.
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• Advanced Object Orientation - It used to be that we Fox developers looked down on VB because it wasn't truly object-oriented. At this point, VB .NET (along with C#) has leap-frogged VFP's OOP capabilities with important advancements such as interface inheritance, the ability to create custom events, true abstract classes and methods, overloaded methods, enumerations, and so on.
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• Targeting Multiple Platforms - Microsoft submitted C# to the ECMA standards committee and C# has been adopted as a universal language. This paved the way for the Mono Project (http://www.mono-project.com). You can write C# code today that can be compiled for either the Windows or the Linux platform

>I've literally taught hundreds of VFP developers .NET, and although the learning curve can be tough at first, I have yet to find someone who was sorry they arrived on the other side. Most VFP developers who are using .NET love it (well for the most part, love it and sometimes hate it as is the case with most MS products <s>).
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>I know there's a lot of heat behind the VFP/.NET discussions, but I highly recommend VFP developers take a serious look at .NET when getting ready to rewrite or create brand new applications.
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>Regards,