On 3/15/07, Brian Abbott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > If someone like him feels the pain, what hope for the rest of us? > > After quite a while spent on the fence I've decided against pursuing > .Net - the whole thing is such a behometh that you have to either buy > into it totally (and take whatever MS throws at you) or walk the other > way ...
The first step of recovery is admitting you have a problem. Welcome, Brian. ;) I think any change will be hard. My plan, slowly gelling since 1998 but accelerating over the past couple of years, has been: 1. Learn enough LAMP to deliver websites for clients. Learn enough Linux to be able to run it safely, as little Apache as possible, as much about databases as I can and enough PHP to fake it pretty well. Done, starting in 2005. And ongoing. I am not a sysadmin except by default as no one else is here willing to do it. So cron jobs, bash scripts, ssh keypairs, backup techniques, RAID, Logical Volume Management, routing, subnets, CIDRs, IPTables, name-based hosting, SSL certificates and so forth become part of the job. Just master another OS. How hard can it be? Well, I think it's easier than keeping up with where Windows has hidden that dialog in this version. Joining the LUGs helped a lot. Getting a beater box and installing on it a couple dozen times helped, too. There's lots and lots of material online to help you do whatever you want. The Answers Are Out There. 2. Evaluate Linux on the desktop. I've been completely on Linux as my primary desktop (first Ubuntu, then Fedora Core 6) since October and it just works. Whil reminds us every chance he gets that "it's so simple an 11-year-old can do it;" the problem is that most of us dont' have eleven year olds around. 3. Find a new primary language to develop in: Python is my choice. Two years of monthly PySIG meetings, a batch of books half-read and I'm getting there. I still confuse classes and instances and modules, and I'm struggling mightily with not confusing Fox syntax with PHP with Python, but even an old calcified brain like mine can make the switch. 4. Learn how to develop rich client apps (preferrably cross-platform) in Python: Dabo is the obvious choice. Ongoing. This is not a short-term or easy switch. Then again, neither was Windows. But that all sounds quite negative. There is an upside, too: I am having a blast with this stuff! There's lots to learn, but I love to learn. Folks who develop and support this stuff want to share, try to help you (as long as you don't waste their time) and there are tons of documentation and help out there. What I can do with the machines is cool. Whil nailed it a while ago : people are passionate about what they are doing, how to do it, and how to make it better. I have missed that. You don't find a lot of passionate Windows sysadmins. They have had that beaten out of them. There are still passionate VFP developers, and I mean to take nothing from them. Rick Schummer and Doug Hennig and the other SednaX developers are going to bring even more powerful tools to the VFP platform and they are doing great work and I hope they can make some good money from their efforts. (We're not hearing from them this week because they are at a MSFT brainwashing session, er, MVP Summit in Redmond.) I am just not convinced that I will be able to find customers who can benefit from their efforts. -- Ted Roche Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
