>> The risk is in naming variables that may conflict with field names, and your program processing the wrong values. Do
>
>That never happened to me. Just lucky I guess.
>Now I'm curious.
>Is it a risk in this case?
>

>name = "joe"
>If name = customer.name
>   exit    
>endif
>

Yes, I think the risk is real in your example, where the interpreter has to resolve the ambiguity presented by a field and a var identified with the same token. If the current open table/cursor alias has a field name then the IF line will evaluate that field, not your memvar. So, in your case if the alias of the table open in the current area is customer then the program will execute exit, ignoring the value of the name memvar.
Conflicts may not occur as easily as shown in your example because of programmers' common sense in naming fields and variables. It is useful up to a certain degree of complexity, after which it becomes folklore.
*