Re: Invade wikipedia!

["(see below)" <yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk>]

On 25/02/2009 08:59, in article
4013d6a4-f4f4-4d6e-92bd-161687608db9@w9g2000yqa.googlegroups.com, "Hibou57
(Yannick Duch�ne)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> wrote:

> 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).

It is not at all clear who you are replying to, but I take it to be me.

> But the to comment on comments asserting it is unuseful and dangerous,
> is another matter.

Indeed, it is more insightful and accurate to say the letter. 8-)

[...] 
> A source without comments, is a source which hides every thing.

Please note that I did NOT say that source should be without comments.
 
> If comments are dangerous, so the human though which drives the
> application developpement (or order it), is as much dangerous.

True, but the compiler checks the human (through their code).
It does not check the comments.
 
> I agree that comments may be dangerous when these are not up to date,
> but this is another matter.

No, it is not another matter.

> Did you ever tried to come back to you own code two years, three years

I have code that I wrote 40 years ago, and I can easily follow it.
That is because I did the work needed to made it understandable.
(That included writing a few, judicious, comments.)

> 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.

How much better to have written the code comprehensibly the first 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.

Agreed, if we extend <comments> to <documentation>.

-- 
Bill Findlay
<surname><forename> chez blueyonder.co.uk