22 Nov
2011
22 Nov
'11
4:55 p.m.
On 22/11/11 10:21 AM, Vincent Slyngstad wrote:
From: "Chuck Guzis"; Monday, November 21,
2011 4:23 PM
It was a lecture on *complex numbers*. If you want to criticise the
didactic style, go ahead; but instead, you wrote:
'there is a time and place for such stuff ... it's *not* in the
middle of trying to understand and debug someone else's code'
Did you not consider that the code in question might have involved
complex numbers? Why assume it was an irrelevant digression? It could
well be helpful for debugging or just understanding how the following
code works.
Personally, I enjoy reading things that try to
educate me--it keeps me
from getting bored and piques my curiosity. But if you're not curious
by nature, I can see where it might be tiresome.
I enjoy these things too, but I'd argue that unless debugging is an
avocation for you, they can distract from getting the job done -- a lot
of debugging is done while people are waiting for the result.
Coding is more than writing
instructions--it's about communication.
Some people will dedicate many lines of commentary explaining how a
particularly complex piece of code operates, using any literary device
to aid in understanding. I admire those who put in enough thought to
take the time to write such stuff.
If it really helps explain what is going on in a terse and to-the-point
way, then I'll be glad of it, too. If it is a distracting anecdote about
someone's lifestyle, not so much. Especially in the pre-Internet days,
I'd be mighty annoyed about having to stop and go look something up.
Um, touch?. And half the world wouldn't bother and would go ahead with
the usual "what happens if I change *that*" haphazard fiddling.
--T
(Also, I am just anal enough that I wouldn't be
able to resist looking
the dang thing up to see what I was missing.)
Vince