21 Nov
2011
21 Nov
'11
3:51 p.m.
On the other hand, a tight loop, with instruction
timings written out
as comments is quite informative.
I remembr reading soem of the PERQ microcode where the comemtns included
the T-state that the memory controller was in (which was important as the
code had to be synchronsied to this). Helped a lot...
One more observation. I've read a lot of other people's code in my
lifetime and one thing that stands out in sharp contrast from the run-
of-the-mill awuful stuff is that the narrative commentary to good,
inspired code is always well-formed, grammatically correct and often
witty.
Consider the fellow who's devised his own allocation algorithms using
a Fibonacci series introducing his narrative with "Lieber Leser".
Or the fellow who, in his buffer-management scheme makes reference to
"guru beads". Or the database author who talks about quipus. When
the same fellow was writing proposal text, he was equally engaging.
And it's something that causes me a bit of despair when reading the
'Net-engendered 133T-text of young programmers.
have you ever read the HP75C ROM source code? The comments are hilarious,
they're often a conversation between 'Joey' and 'Roo-man'. They do
however do a pretty good job of explaining what is going on.
-tony