23 Nov
2011
23 Nov
'11
4:56 p.m.
On 23/11/11 2:18 AM, Charlie Carothers wrote:
On 11/22/2011 2:51 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only
say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
--Alan Perlis
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? 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.