John,

I have a couple comments:

1) Why do you say the knowledge shared by folks is anedcotal? Many of the whitepapers coming from MS are published by the "Best Practices" group. And because many of the principles that are exposed by these whitepapers are based on time tested OOP principles, they do have a history behind their decisions.
2) There could be many factors to explain some giving a 2x factor and some giving 4x and some giving 6x. For example, those saying 2x could have already developed some data handling classes or are using the data handling classes provided by MS Data Access Application Block. I also purchased a .Net E-Commerce book that discussed their data engine in one chapter and provided source. So there are at least 2 good places I know of that provide a data handling class to ease data binding.
3) I think the state of IT has changed, for the better, due to the internet. It is far easier to diseminate information now on any topic. Due to the lack of VFP developers in the world, you can count VFP sites on 1 hand. And this site is able to charge. There are many, many, many quite good and free sites for .Net and Java. Two areas I have experience with. As with anything in life, after spending enough time on these sites someone would have enough experience to judge the reliability of different people's comments.
4) I'm not saying I'm a .Net/Java person here to bash VFP. As VFP is what pays my bills these days, just like Mr. Baird says about himself. I'm only stating what I think is just common sense. First of all, I find it hard to believe that the ratio of .Net or Java to VFP programmers is so hugh, yet folks, including yourself, contend that these data intensive apps can only be accomplished with VFP. I've not once had Java or .Net developers I know complain that something I can do so easy is so hard for them to do. We had an Access/VB programmer as part of our group. He left not too long ago and has gone back to Access, and is very happy he did.

I just have serious doubts that there are as many developers in other languages as there are, and the languages are as seriously deficient as folks here want to believe.


>Dear Jordan,
>
>>>For IT consultants is pleasure to present other their knowledge. You can find a lot of stuff for every new product.
>>>- first MS officers write good tech articles.
>>>- second most of the MVP write also good articles.
>>>- third there a lot of industry gurus which do the same and publish the code
>>>- there are a lot of young people trying to present themself that publish their work with new products.
>
>The articles and papers from the vendor, MVPs, "gurus" and wannabe-experts that you describe, are just lots of anecdote at this point. the plural of "anedcote" is not "data". It is as if a surgeon writes a description of a new treatment that he/she wants other surgeons to try. Even the best surgeon in the world would be expected to support their stance with a valid trial showing a better/more cost-effective outcome or they would not be regarded as a good surgeon for very long.
>
>In the absence of proper evidence, it takes extended customer and developer experience after release to arrive at the facts. For example dotNET has performance issues on some hardware; this has been denied emphatically by gurus and MVPs but the groundswell of evidence is now very clear. Then we have people like you saying it takes 4X as long to write a C/S app in dotNET. Again we have gurus and MVPs denying this emphatically and articles describing time-savings writing C/S apps in dotNET based on a single vaguely defined case that may be irrelevant to most readers. Do you see my point?
>
>Regards
>
>j.R