>>>>OTOH, being asked to use tabulation in a case like this isn't exactly stifling creativity. My VFP coding style, given my druthers, regards any line beginning with a * as the work of the devil and a complete waste of time; giving me total style freedom would *not* be very productive < g >
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>>>Do you mean to say you don't comment? You added the <g> at the end, so perhaps you mean that you hate to comment, but do it because your employer wants it? Obviously, I'm not sure how serious you are, but people that hate to comment and do it because they are "forced to" will generally not comment well and that code is almost always a nightmare to maintain. Mike said, "beautify is your friend" . . . comments are your best friend.
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>>I know that commenting code (even for your own later use) is really time well spent - it's just that it is *so boring* :-{
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>My rule of thumb when writing code is that when I have to stop and think about what to do next, it's time for a comment. That generally results in comments about what's going on rather than how I'm doing it, and doesn't feel boring.
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>For the boring stuff, like headers, I've automated as much as possible. I have an IntelliSense script that puts the format I want in and fills in as much info as it can, so I only have to type the minimum. Ditto for change comments.
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I read some of Tom Rettig's code once (his "simple little old builder" from the early days of VFP 3 IIRC) and thought his use of comments was terrific. He didn't make a fetish of it by putting comments on commands that were clear in themselves. Where it wasn't clear, there were comments -- some a line, some several lines. As baby bear would put it, the comments were juuuust right.