Working as a consultant I see alot of companies doing the same thing. Someone will write some code (pick any language) and put it into production, including mission critical & customer facing production enviroments when the code should never be run in a lab let alone where it is running. Too many webmasters/web developers/etc that generate this code do no error checking at all. I have gone into production sites, entering "scott rules" for every field that had a text box where it was expecting either text (e.g. names, locations), numbers (e.g. phone number, ip numbers, device numbers), text boxes (large input boxes), etc... breaking the interface since it was expecting 1.2.3.4 syntax and I entered "scott rules". After I showed them a simple little code to check to make sure the inputed values are at least in the correct format (e.g. 6.7.8.8 for an IP address), at least their code was a little more stable.

But with the cut backs/recession I have seen more and more people inherit code that they do not know anything about the language nor how/why it was written the way it was.

</rambling>

Randal, be very very afraid! It is much worse than you think.

Scott