more like "Waiting for Godot" then?

Apparently you're already running into some serious maintenance issues with that contractor's work?

I'm interested in this discussion, though I'd tend to side with George -- which seems a minority opinion. In my own work, I find that in a system of significant complexity, 20-30 tables with associated statuses and business rules, that constants are a necessity -- at least for me to comprehend what's going on.

George stated it well -- that it's the meaning of the value rather than the value itself which is of significance if you're reading the program (as distinct from debugging). The inability to ascertain the value of a constant in the VFP debugger is a hindrance. But, if you're picking up a program for the first time and trying to understand it, I find that constants add a tremendous amount to intelligibility.

I also tend to write in a more stuctured programming style, and now, continue to try to understand and use object orientation in useful ways. Again, those strategies allow building more robust and maintainable solutions from my perspective.

I was curious about how your department handles those issues -- how do you create standards, procedure libraries, standard class libraries and then inform members of the department about how to use them?

I spent a summer in college down at UT some time ago. Particularly enjoyed the Austin music scene. I guess Austin's changed a bit over the past decade with the impact of startups.


Jay