Rick;

I have used a total of 14 languages as a software developer for which I was paid. Each had something essential as far as an immediate requirement. It may have been hardware related or there may have been other reasons.

As a developer I have had many clients including International Corporations, branches of State government Universities and many large companies. Until five years ago I have always used the tool I thought best for the job.

I enjoyed your seminar in San Francisco back in September of 1997, for West Wind Connection. Your comments about politics within IT are so true! Perceptions, marketing, salesmanship and business decisions determine what product will be used as a development tool. Five years ago the developer had more to say about such matters. That is not true today.

It took me four gruesome years to convince my company to let me use VFP. An important project came up and I was told to use ASP. The project entailed the ability to handle huge SQL Server tables, grab data and create reports. I convinced them to let me use VFP and everyone is happy! By using my class library from home it took me less than one day to complete the project. I cannot describe the complexity of the application but it was interesting and stretched the VFP report writer to new heights.

You should see one of my projects using ASP. Over 170 forms and 200,000 lines of code. It is a monster and continues to grow as people decide what else to add to it. There are hundreds of users. Along the way we worked with Microsoft and determined there were problems with browsers that were “interesting”. I want to get my project into ASP.NET to make life easier. I hope I succeed in convincing management that is the best way to go. In my opinion an ASP project of this size is a disaster waiting to happen.

Every tool has a place. Perhaps that is why I have twelve different hammers at home for my woodworking projects! :)

Tom