>Though the articles convey useful information and although you've been personally helpful to me, I must admit that I am not a fan of the style you've used with the column.

Well, of course we cannot please everyone, and I am sorry that you don't like the style. But I must say that it is entirely deliberate and done with "malice aforethought".

The original intention, and key selling point, of the column (when I took over from Barbara Peisch as co-author to Paul Maskens back in 1998) was to be different from the "usual" style of article published in the technical magazines. We sought to do this by presenting a problem as a dialog between two developers that actually traced the process of getting from point A ("I have a problem") to Point Z ("WE have a solution"). Marcia and I have, in particular, sought to bring out this process more clearly and we deliberately try to cover as many alternatives as we can think of - even the 'bad' ones sometimes.

This was, and remains, a direct contrast to the more usual format of "Here's how to do this" which focuses on a single implementation and rarely, if ever, covers alternatives that were considered and discarded.

Of course, as you have stated so clearly, not everyone finds this useful, or enjoyable, but then (I hope) no-one is actually forced to read it either. I just hope you won't let the presence of our column affect your decision to purchase and continue to support any magazine in which it may appear.