>BTW, I hardly use public AND private variables, but I'll never tell people that they're kind of forbidden.

Peter,

I will tell people that publics are forbidden. IMHO public variables should be removed from the language totally, I will never miss them. BTW I believe strongly that when one is seen as a knowledgable person by others one carries an extra responsibility. If I say PUBLIC or PRIVATE vars are OK it is immediately interpreted by certain folks as permission to create poorly designed applications because PUBLIC and PRIVATE vars are symptomatic of design problems. Privates less than PUBLICS as most applications need at least one global (Private in the startup program) var, the reference to main app object. Declaring a variable PUBLIC is an invitation to disaster and some bugs that are very difficult to isolate.