Re: Problems retaining what I study

Comments embedded.

On Fri, 19 Aug 2005 10:36:52 -0500, "Dennis Williams" <oracledba.williams_at_gmail.com> 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 - Out-of-date comments can be misleading.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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