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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,f292779560fb8442 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: fac41,af40e09e753872c X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,30e368bdb3310fe5 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: f8c65,30e368bdb3310fe5 X-Google-Attributes: gidf8c65,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,30e368bdb3310fe5 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1008e3,30e368bdb3310fe5 X-Google-Attributes: gid1008e3,public X-Google-Thread: 10db24,30e368bdb3310fe5 X-Google-Attributes: gid10db24,public From: bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff) Subject: Re: The Last Word on Comments (was Re: Hungarian notation) Date: 1996/06/03 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 158245423 references: <4o07o9$rfu@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au> <4o1vo3$p2a@news1.ni.net> <4oegks$ntn@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU> organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.modula3,comp.lang.modula2,comp.edu,comp.lang.eiffel Date: 1996-06-03T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article , Clark L. Coleman wrote: >Among the amazingly bogus statements made in this discussion was the >declaration that any comment indicates that your language was not >expressive enough, and hence you would ideally have no comments. This >is surely the most ignorant statement ever made about the subject. It probably seems that way to you, because you didn't understand my point. I was intentionally exaggerating in order to make a point. I'm sure you are familiar with the technique of exaggeration-for-effect, since you used it twice in the above paragraph. ;-) My point (without exaggeration) was simply that (1) if your programming language provides a way of saying something that needs saying, then say it in the language, rather than in a comment, and (2) programming languages are moving in that direction, and should move further in that direction. Clearly, an Ada program needs fewer comments than an assembly language program, and that's a benefit. I'm certainly not under the illusion that we can move programming languages all the way to some ideal state in which every imaginable thing you might want to say (like "why did I choose this data structure") can be obvious from the code. Does that make more sense? >If you have not worked on truly large projects that were proven to [blah blah blah] >algorithm on a sheet of paper and then coding; PLEASE do not waste >net bandwidth replying to this message. Would you like to see my resume, and a list of references, before you bother reading my post? ;-) - Bob