22 Nov
2011
22 Nov
'11
11:18 p.m.
On 11/22/2011 2:51 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
Jason McBrien wrote:
Yes, indeed! I can well remember at times looking at code I wrote only
6 months previously and going "Who wrote this mess?" ;-) or at least
going "I wonder what this does?". In recent years I've been known to
claim, perhaps somewhat facetiously, that the comments are worth more
than the code. Maybe what software development really needs is a
language where the comments *are* the code?
--
Later,
Charlie C.
In God We Trust!!!
NASA: Give Ed Mitchell his camera back!
I've found the following to be true:
1 - If you wrote the code, even if it's undocumented, you are
going to be likely to know what it does when reviewed later on
You must have a much better memory than most people. My experience,
which matches that of every programmer I've spoken to about this, is
that any code I wrote but last looked more than three years ago takes
very nearly as much effort to understand as code of comparable quality
by another author but which I've never seen before.
That means that I find it worthwhile to document code well even if I
think that the only audience for that documentation is my future self.