>That's why I didn't mention you, nor the thread it was from. One suggestion for Michel's polls would be to have a question "what's the ratio of new stuff vs cleaning up legacy stuff in your work". My bet is 9:1 in favor of patching up legacy.

Dragan;

For the last ten years as a programmer, each employer I worked for would either give me someones code to fix or a new project. I was instructed "fix the problem and do not clean up any code". In other words if it works don't fix it! There is always a "best" way to do something but the problem is that no two programmers I have met agree what that is, unless it is his/her own code!

Most of my projects been new stuff, but I have done my share of "fixing" code written by others. Maybe I am lucky. Guys I work with tell me my comments are longer than the code I write. I just like to know what I did - in case I have to look at it at a later date.

Tom