Re: Problems retaining what I study

Comments embedded.

On Fri, 19 Aug 2005 10:36:52 -0500, "Dennis Williams"
<oracledba.williams@xxxxxxxxx> said:
> I used to work for a software vendor whose policy was "*no comments in
> code* ".

It is obvious that this company has not hired guys who will go to *any*
extent to keep their job like declaring variables as l_mc_tmp_1_qp and
writing like

if l_m_tmp_ac = 2  update <table_name> set flag='R' end if

Handover such a code to the software company you worked and see their
reaction. Documentation is a must. No if's and but's. I would appreciate
any setup where they insist on code review + documentation.

> Usually I'm a real documentation kind of guy. So I was a bit shocked
> at this policy, to say the least. And this job was writing C code
> which doesn't have a reputation for self-documentation. After working
> there for awhile, I gradually began to see the wisdom of their policy.
> Consider these points:
>  - Comments can be a crutch. If a programmer is forced to rely solely
>    on the code, then you tend to make the code more self-documenting.
>    Perhaps instead of selecting "A", "B" and so on for variable names,
>    you carefully select meaningful names. Or write the code in a
>    straightforward manner rather than dazzling with arcane
>    constructions.
>  - Out-of-date comments can be misleading. People often modify code
>    but fail  to modify the comments.
>  - Most comments are superfluous, of the variety "the following line
>    sums the values of A and B and stores the result in C", followed by
>    C = A + B. Having 7 lines of comment per line of code can end up
>    obscuring the code. Dennis Williams

HTH GovindanK
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