>>>>>But I really get tired of listening to Visual FoxPro 'developers' with limited skill sets talk about 'rolling my own' regarding a framework when they don't even understand the issues involved, let alone how to solve them.
>>>
>>>Well, they must have understood something, because they go the app going and at least someone was satisfied that it did the job, or it never would have been installed and paid for.
>>
>>In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
>
>Funny, though, we have the same proverb in reverse: "Međ ćoravima, ko ima jedno oko, ne meću ga za kralja" (among the blind, who has one eye, they don't put him for king), simply because nobody trusts nor understands what this guy's talking about it. Though, the cultures aren't that different - we've had our share of con artists ;).
>
>>>When I want to listen to Chopin, I know where to find him.
>>
>>Exactly, and hopefully it won't be some clown who sincerely thinks he knows what he's doing because he is really that ignorant. As Tamar said, you can make a pretty good living trailing after guys like that, cleaning up the messes they've made.
>
>We called it "the best customer is where you walk in over a dead body of one of those". Those customers eat from your hand.
>
>> When I come in and find an app that crashes in multiuser situations, routinely trashes DBC/DBFs on a network, works against SQL Server but has no conception of shared connections, hard codes stuff that should be data-driven, has tables that are poorly designed and key on actual data fields ...
>
>...his tables are anything but normal, has his own names for controls everybody else calls differently, has taken weeks to write a protection scheme based on the serial number of the disk, which then fails under new version of Windows while the guy is skiing somewhere, but on the other hand there's no guarantee that referential integrity actually exists, nor that ESC really leaves data unsaved (yes I saw that one too - awful!).

A couple years ago I had the 'pleasure' of working on an app that had been begun by a rather high profile and well known Fox developer ( 'a legend in his own mind') A VFP app, but tables and fields were all named with short names, leading to creative abbreviations. Extra points were evidently awarded for never using the same abbreviation twice. 'Cust' 'custmr' 'custom' 'custer' 'cstmr' etc. Also creative use of singular and plural in naming tables, fields and variables.

He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool; avoid him.
He who knows not and knows that he knows not is a student; teach him.
He who knows and knows not that he knows is asleep; wake him.
He who knows and knows that he knows is a wise man; follow him.

( and he who knows not, knows not that he knows not, but has somehow snowed the client right up until the app blew up is a cash cow - follow him too. )