Thanks Ken. I own a bunch of Hentzenwerke books and I too found them invaluable, but I read them as an experienced Foxpro programmer not a novice, so I use them more as reference material and for examples than anything else. In fact, on a recent project, I used a little book titled "Using SQLite to Bypass The 2 GB .DBF Filesize Limit" book by Whil Hentzen and edited by our very own Ted Roche to create a unique solution for a client I actually installed this morning (Thanks for the helpful hints Ted!).
I too was self-taught starting with TRS-80 Basic, moving to GWBasic, Dbase II, FoxBase, Foxpro for Dos, VFP 6.0 and finally VFP 9.0. I'm able to read and understand C++, C#, Python and several other general purpose languages.
I get that anyone can sit down with a manual or videos and learn how to write a "Hello, World!" program, but what I can't figure out is how to teach someone how to figure out a solution where no solution currently exists, or more likely, how to take a solution/example and re-purpose it to solve a different need.
Anyway, sounds like we have similar backgrounds, and I'm glad to get to know you through this forum!
Paul
-----Original Message----- From: ProfoxTech [mailto:profoxtech-bounces@leafe.com] On Behalf Of Ken Dibble Sent: Friday, January 26, 2018 9:49 AM To: profoxtech@leafe.com Subject: Re: Foxpro/Programming Training Question
In my opinion there are two issues: 1) Basic Programming Skills and 2) VFP specific skills, and I'm interested in your suggestions in how to meet both of those needs. Plus if there are other issues, let me know that
as well.
I'm completely self-taught (and sometimes it shows). I don't have much to offer on basic programming skills. I played around with Basic in my youth briefly, and I got some formal instruction in C++ later in life but never used it to produce anything more than training exercises. I've briefly tinkered with Python--enough to convince myself that I could learn it if I had to, though I've never had to.
But for VFP, I first taught myself dbXL using the examples in the manual, and when I had to move from DOS into Windows I taught myself VFP.
The Hentzenwerke books were invaluable to me; I'm sure I never would have developed any real-world-usable skills without them. Especially:
Hacker's Guide to Visual Foxpro 6.0 (THANKS TED!!!) The Fundamentals by Whil Hentzen Effective Techniques for Application Development with Visual Foxpro (Booth & Sawyer: RIP Ms. Booth)
To a lesser extent:
Advanced Object Oriented Programming with Visual Foxpro 6.0 - Marcus Egger Debugging Visual Foxpro Applications (Nancy Folsom; whatever happened to her?) Visual Foxpro Report Writer - Cathy Pountney
Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org
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