I agree with you that you do need to learn the basics, but if you're learning how to "develop apps" with VFP, I think there are much better resources.

But if you think back to when you started ask: what drove you to write crispy clean projects? What interested you in this kind of crazy career?

You're an artist - your a hippie - you're a rebel with a cause - to sit on top of the heap - alone - basking in your mastery of the trade!:-)

It probably wasn't what some other developer wrote or a solution he shared that locked you into a "syle". You probably rejected most "advice" thinking, as many of us probably do, that the ideas you saw were old school and that your ideas were better, and - that it was just a matter of acquiring the experience necessary to execute on your ideas.

I think progress is made by borrowing what we need to from the elders - not emulating them. Deep down inside a "real" developer is an anarchist - a non-conformist - an arrogant "I can do it better" poet and the "old guys", as it relates to design and function, are just that - yesterdays news.

It boils down to that old addage: "How do you get to Carnigey Hall?" ..."Practice, practice, practice!"

Or a more recent favorite ".. program, program, program or you'll wind up living in a van down by the river!".