>I was merely arguing your point that certain coding styles infer inexperience. I disagree with that and believe have pointed out its infallible claim. Our small team has over 40 years of Fox experience. We have seen just about all there is to see.

Possibly therein lies the difference, Michael.
Many people say flat out that 'wasted lines' = inexperience = poor code.
Yet many of these people 'waste' lines when they believe it is appropriate, yet still consider any but their own "standard" as 'wasted lines'.

I believe in safer code and clearer code. Either of those will cause me to put in things - many of which I've mentioned here (but not all < s >) - that others will consider "wasted" and thus originating from inexperience.
One of the ways I (try to) write safer code is to avoid issues that I have seen reported in bug reports. My rationale is rather simple... if it got broken once it can obviously be broken again, so I'd much rather code defensively so that the problem is side-stepped should it arise again.

There ain't much that can be said that's going to change my mind on that issue in the overall. That's why I originally said that I don't care how people might classify me based on what they see in my code.

cheers

PS I saw you say that your application will be converted to .NET by around 2008-2009. By then it's likely that MS will have a brand new "latest and greatest" < s >