[SNIP]
>And in response to your other comment about the responsibility I spoke of, there are always new programmers looking in on conversations and we, as experienced developers, have to remember that the thinking process we may go through before reaching a conclusion and taking an action is not the same as that of a newer programmer. I have spent a good deal of my carreer teaching and that has taught me that new programmers do not think like experienced programmers. I can tell you stories of new Fox programmers talking about "never use macros because they are slow", "create indices on every field because Rushmore is fast", "always use SQL SELECTs because they are better than xBase code", and on and on. Every one of these quotes is taken from a new programmer (mis)quoting what they heard an experienced programmer say.

Jim,
"Never use private and public variables". That's what an experienced programmer told me, also my manager at that moment, when I made the jump from fp to vfp. "Well, there are situations that their use is allowed", was my reply. "NO!", was his reply. I've never been able to convince him and he's never been able to convince me. After half a year I left that company, partly because of this and other different insights about how to code. BTW, he's a nice guy and a good professional, some of you may know him, and the contact is good.
The people who ask advice here at UT are either experienced or newbees, I know. And they require different approaches, I know. But I also think that we make things harder for newbees if our advices are limited to the explanation of fundamentalistic principles. The experienced know when to (ab)use other techniques and thus they're able to solve certain problems. A newbee is already having a hard time and we shouldn't make life harder for them than it already is. So, we should tell them the 'workarounds' and exceptions also, at least in a byline. If they happen to make the exceptions the rule, than they're probably lousy programmers anyway. So, now I'm an experienced vfp-programmer I say to newbees "there's only seldom an excuse for using private and public variables", just like I say "macro's are fine with me", "there's an advantage to creating indices on certain fields" and "sql-select's have some nice advantages over tradional xbase code". None of them has the words 'always' and 'never'. Why couldn't you try to use such wording? THAT would be humble, in the sense of mild.

BTW, I started a new thread in the 'coding, syntax & command' section. No one has reacted yet. I'll ask MichelF to transfer it to 'chatter'.