11. Am I required to adapt to some strange new methodology?

No.

Genesis V lets you develop applications in the way most suited to the project and personnel involved.  It will support a total bottom-up data analysis approach - or a top-down functional analysis approach - or an approach located anywhere between these two.

You can specify most of the application rules in the dictionary against the files and fields, or specify them against each program - or you can use a mixture of both approaches, as is appropriate in most cases.