It gets better: This app was handed to me, so I can fix all kinds of weird and non-consistent errors that were happening all the time. The vb app was created by a contractor ($100/hr) who converted it from a Microsoft Access database that was developed by another consultant over a span of a year and a half for which she was paid in excess of $200k. Until this day, I cannot believe what I saw and comprehend how a consultant can get paid that much money for creating an Access database using textboxes as boolean variables and for another contractor to convert the code and not realize the insanity of that code either. And there was me, making just little over $50k at the time...disgusting isn't it

For me, it was a WinForms app written in VB.NET that was using hidden Textbox controls on the form as a Boolean variable!!! The whole app was full with checks for true/false against a Textbox.Text property instead of simply declaring a boolean variable.

I have seen that code in a VB6 app and it was a convenient way to get an empty but initialized (containing columns you were interested in) RecordSet from the database that you could then populate with data and save.