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: 103376,9e927c332cabaf8f X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Ehud Lamm Subject: Re: Loss of Mars Climate Orbiter due to units of measurment conflicts Date: 1999/10/22 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 539023829 References: <7t9tvd$9h3$1@netserv.univ-lille1.fr> <1999Oct4.072511.1@eisner> <2A02C30D72C8E6B4.DFCF46BA85758C97.B51FFEB632AE496F@lp.airnews.net> <38062935.F35CF3F1@ftw.rsc.raytheon.com> <380F272A.988B7524@ftw.rsc.raytheon.com> <7uo03r$ltt$1@nnrp1.deja.com> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.huji.ac.il X-Trace: news.huji.ac.il 940543742 21530 132.64.178.45 (21 Oct 1999 22:09:02 GMT) Organization: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mime-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: 21 Oct 1999 22:09:02 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1999-10-21T22:09:02+00:00 List-Id: Let's not argue about whether the arguments are real... :-) I read the discussions, I just wanted to point out that sometimes arguments cause exagerations and taking the extreme. By the way (to make this a little programming related), I think that there are cases that naming can reduce the need for comments. This is seen with people who choose very bad names, which must be accompanined by comments - since they are otherwise meaningless or misleading. I had a student who called a routine Input - but the routine simply returned an initial value. Now - a commnet really helped me understand what he wanted the routine to do. Naming it better would have been a better solution. But after stating this rather banal cliam, I think we can agree that with normally acceptable names, we still need comments since names do not provided enough information. My approach is sually that if someone can misread you, or not understand your design reasoning - it is much better to explain (using comments, and some times, god forbid, external documentation), than to solve the problems that will arise later. Usually the someone misreading you, will be yourself a week later... Ehud Lamm mslamm@mscc.huji.ac.il http://purl.oclc.org/NET/ehudlamm <== My home on the web Check it out and subscribe to the E-List- for interesting essays and more!