🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <310c7337.53494d4d4f4e53@simmons.actrix.gen.nz>, jim@simmons.actrix.gen.nz (Jim Simmons) writes:
> On Fri, 19 Jan 1996, Douglas Evan Cook wrote:
> >We used M2 as the original development
> >platform because it is self-documenting (well-written code reads like a
> >good novel in M2, and comments are usually not needed within modules),
> 
>  What shit!  Please do not perpetuate this attitude.
>  Everyone knows their own code better than their own privates...
>  until you forget, then it might as well be gibberish.

Well, that's your opinion! I agree M2 is not self-documenting - the
programmer has to put in the effort to ensure that the code is readable,
but it is quite possible to write code in M2 that is self-explanatory.
Procedures generally need some overall description to say what they are
doing, but unless you are employing some tricky algorithm, you don't
normally need comments within the body of the code that tell you how
they do it. 

> >(as opposed to Ada) has a quick debug-compile-test cycle.  Until I
>                                                             ^^^^^^^^
> >graduate (at which point I don't have a clue where I will be working), M2
>  ^^^^^^^^^
>  This explains the bit about non-commented code.

That was uncalled for.

>  You won't work for me with that attitude. Whatever language, be it C, C++
>  Modula-2 or Pascal. It makes no difference.

Again, I disagree. I feel the need to put far more comments in C code than I
do in Pascal or M2, because C has a more obscure syntax, and does not allow
the same degree of data encapsulation and abstraction.


>  Maybe if it was commented it wouldn't be so mysterious.
> 
>  Sorry if this sounds a bit acerbic, but this is one very good yet
>  very simple habit to get into, and the longer you code the more you
>  will appreciate it - even if you are the only one that ever reads
>  your own code. In a year's time it might as well have been a stranger.

I recently looked at some M2 code I wrote 7 or 8 years ago. It had no
comments. I had no problem understanding it.

>  More and more employers nowadays are asking for samples of code, or
>  even watching you produce code, before they hire you.
>  Clean, well commented code can hardly do you any harm.

However, poorly or overly commented code would do you harm if I was
judging it. Consider the following example:

	i++;		/* increment index */

What did that comment tell you that the code didn't. Yet that was an
example given in an article I read on how to set coding standards that
would help you gain ISO9000 QA approval!

Martin