Thank you to all who have voiced thoughts on the pros/cons of IBO, FIB+, IBX, etc. This is the stuff that will help me (and others) make an informed choice about what development tools to start with. Ideally, in time I will become familiar with all the tools and be able to select the right one for the right task, but for now I need to rely on your experiences and opinions.

The friendly rivalry between camps would seem to indicate a very healthy future for IB/FB. Certainly developers are the winners when there are several excellent tools at their disposal instead of just one. It really is a delight to discover such a close-knit, supportive family such as IB/FB.

The following is definitely OT and personal, but I'll keep it short. Right now, with my newbie status (even with my 15+ years of computing), I can not contribute much in the way of knowledge or expertise to the IB/FB community... except this: for the past month since discovering IB/FB, I've had that glow of excitement that you get when you open a door and find a huge new world waiting to be explored. It doesn't happen too often; in fact, the instances seem to diminish with age, sadly. But this has got me fired up and bouncing off the walls, and obviously that would not have been possible without these community sites and lists and the people populating them -- who once opened this same door, stepped through wide-eyed and slack-jawed, and said, "Whoa!"

I look forward to seeing FB/IB thrive, I look forward to getting even more excited as I explore the possibilities, and I look forward to learning as much as I can from your collective skills and experiences. (I also look forward to the gigantic invoices I will be able to send my clients once I convince them to dump everything and move to IB.)

Regards,
Andrew Ferguson
Perth, Western Australia



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]