Hi Bill,

>> At least one trade show company the purports to be big in .NET

>> development ** has no .NET consulting work whatsoever **. (In fact,

>> if you define "work" for the moment as doing .NET application

>> development, not getting paid for writing .NET articles, or .NET

>> training, or writing .NET books, or selling .NET products, or

>> getting INETA to pay for you to speak at .NET User Groups, or

>> speaking at conferences, at least 2 out the 4 recent VFP -> C# MVPs

>> right now are doing no .NET work at all.) That's .NET in the real

>> world <g>.

Some observations:

1) For these folks this state of affairs is one phone call, or one

referral away from complete reversal.

2) Pioneering costs always include, among other costs, leading the

demand curve with all the opportunity costs and failed experimentation

costs that's implied.

That said, in this particular case, you can buy articles, books, tools,

frameworks, and consulting from people who've not actually done much

of anything, nor apparently do they have customers with real-world

needs with which to refine the said articles, books, tools,

frameworks, and consulting. It's as if by magic our VFP

implementation experience maps more or less to .NET. Maybe so, to

some degree, probably to a degree equivalent to how FP 2.6

implementation experienc eventually mapped to VFP. Maximum.

Still, the hypocrisy emanating from some in our community is, in my

view, outrageous. Reminds me of some over-sold hot tubs. As in "you

won't believe the *action* in the hot tub!". Yeah, right.

The biggest mistake one can make when in a niche market is wish one

wasn't in a niche market.

And if anyone here goes to .NET in a serious way in the near future,

please eventually report back here on how crowded the marketplace is,

what it's like to compete with the book and article writers for

morsels of work, and what it's like to be creating an installed base

and a client portfolio with .NET starting from a zero-knowledge basis.

I once seriously, honestly believed that I could write an accounting

system with Lotus Macros. I was young, and I was wrong. About twenty

years have passed since then. I wonder what some people believe about

.NET today. Achieving one degree of separation with [name here] comes

to mind. This is what people are buying into. Good luck to them, I

hope they don't give us *all* a bad name, which is entirely possible.

**--** Steve