From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,587e0e0a16d65b10 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!w9g2000yqa.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Hibou57_=28Yannick_Duch=EAne=29?= Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Invade wikipedia! Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:59:05 -0800 (PST) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <4013d6a4-f4f4-4d6e-92bd-161687608db9@w9g2000yqa.googlegroups.com> References: <1tw8gryqdolal$.1osqedj9x821c.dlg@40tude.net> <5c44eaae-631d-46d2-8384-86af79d5e048@n20g2000vba.googlegroups.com> <944a1924-0fa7-487f-a94d-084a2be1b231@v31g2000vbb.googlegroups.com> <9f2553d3-66f5-4708-a237-bfef1d8404f4@v42g2000yqj.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 79.91.74.177 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1235552346 11468 127.0.0.1 (25 Feb 2009 08:59:06 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:59:06 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: w9g2000yqa.googlegroups.com; posting-host=79.91.74.177; posting-account=vrfdLAoAAAAauX_3XwyXEwXCWN3A1l8D User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; fr),gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:4762 Date: 2009-02-25T00:59:05-08:00 List-Id: To say that these comments does not offer any value, ... it is a valuable point of view (as is as much the one which says that it may be useful for visual seeking). But the to comment on comments asserting it is unuseful and dangerous, is another matter. In my humble opinion, it is impossible to understand a full application without comments... impossible to know what was the choices made when a particular method were setted up, what aspects were balanced, what design principle it belongs to, how it does collaborate with other parts of the program, etc, etc. A source without comments, is a source which hides every thing. If comments are dangerous, so the human though which drives the application developpement (or order it), is as much dangerous. I agree that comments may be dangerous when these are not up to date, but this is another matter. Comments acts like UML schemas : it helps to make sense, it offers one more view on an application, and multiple view at least helps to discover inconsistencies. The first thing I look at in my own code, in not the code, it is at comments, when there are some (I try to comment every methods, every singular line of code, but it usually come at ends, when things are mature enough). Did you ever tried to come back to you own code two years, three years later ? I use to do, on some application I lacked to comment.... the only one thing I could do was to regret this lack, and restart the whole work, without forgetting comments the second time. Well, perhpaps it should be worth to point about the life cycle. If you are talking about very short life cycle applications, then, I agree.... you can drop comments. But if not, you will inevitably face a fact : meanings, purpose and implementations are not the same things. There is code for implementations and purposes, and comments for purposes and meanings. Other exemples of useful comments : let comments which tell how to update the application (extend, modify, etc), let