You remind me of myself when I first wrote my Crew Chief Software in 1994. I had the world figured out, or so I thought.

I had public variables out the ***, I could not understand why some calculations didn't always work so I pounded the program into submission using more public vars. I have over 7,000 customers who had to have updates virtually every week so I could fix what public variables did. It is difficult to track a variable that has been changed 7 levels down by some forgotton procedure.

Fast forward to 3 years ago or so. I had enough of my issues so Andy and Marcia were enlisted to help me. Since then I have rewritten the entire application with 0 public variables. I have updates as I add features, not to correct problems from a public variable.

I have an error tracking system built into the Old program and the new one. The old one fired everyday, the new one NEVER. Not one error reported by a user in a year. Better design and coding fixed my issues and I have Andy and Marcia to thank for this.

The advice they give is simply advice, you can use it if you want. It is my opinion that you do not want to change your Old Bad Habits. Well go ahead and continue your habits, nobody cares. If you have a simple, small application then that is OK, but when you get to an 11 Meg EXE file (like mine) then you probably need to follow convential wisdom and our advice, or you will work like a dog for no reason.

Just my 2 cents.



Don Higgins