On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 00:43:21 GMT, "Mark Jerde"
wrote:

Once upon a time I was a super-expert (IMHO g) on xBASE, especially on
combination DOS / UNIX development and implementation. I was the lead on
one project that literally took xBASE to its design limits in the call
stack. I architected and implemented a data-dictionary based directory
crawler that would update database versions overnight. (Extremely necessary
when developing systems whilst data entry people were typing in data. g)

Then Microsoft released MS Access 1.0 for $99.00. Literally overnight, I
saw all my hard-won
SET EXCLUSIVE ON
skills had gone the way of the horse and buggy.

Adapt or die.

Ha, another fellow victim. I was the resident Clipper programmer at a
shop in Atlanta. Wrote xBase Clipper code for a service managment
application that was multi-user/workstation with nested gets (!) and
tons of assembly UDFs. Thousands of hours of work reduced to
worthlessness in less than a year. The only advantage at this point
is that it will run on all those old 386s lining the landfills. :-|

Greg