Hi dragan,

>>I agree. However, a developer does not always have the freedom to design as he/she pleases. Most often a standard is already in place and the programmer has to adhere to those standards whether they agree with them or not. Especially where teams are concerned or the IT Manager is not a developer (a scenario I have run into numerous times). I wonder how many VFP developers would answer honestly if asked during a job interview "Do you prefer to work with classes in a vcx or in a prg?" and "Are you able to work with classes designed either way?" not that the questions are ever asked...
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>And the answer I'd like to hear from a candidate would be "I don't care - both are OK for me". Specially with the advent of the Document View window, either is easily navigated.
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>And in-house standards need to be respected. A good team member may need to be some sort of chameleon in that, to follow the common programming style, so whoever comes to maintain the code doesn't have to change his glasses to read a different coding style.
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>Of course, if the existing style is rife of bad programming practices, then... good luck to both the team and the new member. They'll need it.

I think you've hit the hammer on the nail. I'm willing to change my coding practises when I'm involved in someone else's project, so I'd expect every one participate in my projects to adhere to my coding standards at least to a reasonable extend. Once I had one programmer applying for a position wanting to do it totally different in my project as he did object to my project structure and coding practises, arguing that his way was better. Needless to say we were forced to end the relationship. The sad thing was that, though he probably was a decent programmer he was not flexible enough to be a team member. I have to confess that I've been on both sides of the coin. I too, quite a few years ago, have tried to force my standards into another ones project (they were not using .EXE, but the runtime FPD 2.6 environment running PRGs, not using rushmore etc), but you'll find that indeed the relationship is not going to work out.

Walter,