[edw519]

Thanks for your words.

Your welcome. Posts like yours often help other people as well, so thank you too.

I'm never comfortable with my code

Neither am I. I don't think that feeling ever goes away. Whenever I look at something I wrote last year, I think 2 things: "I can't believe I wrote this," and "I hope no one else ever sees it with my name on it."

It just takes a very long time for me to develop something from scratch

Then don't write anything from scratch. I have about 2 dozen "base programs". Whenever I need to develop something new, I grab the closest one, "save as" something else and get to work. I'm always tweaking, improving, and adding to those base programs, kinda like automating my own continuous improvement. I'm too busy focusing on my user's dilemma and the task at hand to waste valuable brain space memorizing syntax. Every little boost helps. We all do it.

[gabrielroth]

I have about 2 dozen "base programs". Whenever I need to develop something new, I grab the closest one, "save as" something else and get to work.

That's an interesting method. Could you give an example of those 'base programs'—what are they, how long, how much do they do, etc.

[edw519]

   1. basic form
   2. form with multi-valued lines
   3. form with data set (multi-valued parent/children)
   4. form with grid
   5. tabbed form
   6. form with skins
   7. batch (loop thru something)
   8. batch update selected records in a table
   9. batch dump table records --> .txt or .xml file
  10. batch .txt or .xml file --> update table records
  11. batch file --> create & populate database table
  12. cut an email
  13. traverse internal tree function
  14. traverse file index(es)
  15. build html from parameters
  16. build javascript from parameters
  17. build .pdf from parameters
  18. build hp esc sequences from parameters
  19. benchmark a process
  20. how does that syntax work?
  21. which way is faster?
  22. batch string parser
  23. batch source code search
  24. batch source code changer

I have more, but I don't have time to find them right now. OK, I think I'll add:

  25. batch parse source code, identify routine for reuse

[zem]

a lot of these sound like they should be libraries.