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=0.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fac41,a48e5b99425d742a X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,a48e5b99425d742a X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,a48e5b99425d742a X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public X-Google-Thread: 107d55,a48e5b99425d742a X-Google-Attributes: gid107d55,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,5da92b52f6784b63 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: ffc1e,a48e5b99425d742a X-Google-Attributes: gidffc1e,public From: Joachim Durchholz Subject: Re: Papers on the Ariane-5 crash and Design by Contract Date: 1997/03/24 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 228342514 Sender: Joachim Durchholz References: <858728022snz@transcontech.co.uk> Organization: ccn - computer consultant network GmbH Reply-To: joachim.durchholz@munich.netsurf.de Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.programming.threads,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.java.tech Date: 1997-03-24T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Comments as source code documentation help, but they don't eliminate the problem. I have seen code where comments and code were badly out of sync (I have to woefully admit that I'm the author of some of it). The reason for such inconsistencies is usually pressure to meet a deadline. We all (well, most of us) program on systems where only a tiny fraction of the code is available. For example, I have to live with Windows in its various incarnations, and I don't have the sources of that. Documentation in the source would be a desaster, except if it were derived from the source automatically. In Eiffel, there are clear places where the programmer should write such comments - preconditions, postconditions, invariants. Languages without explicit support for programming-by-contract don't have such good places, so there are no universally recognized tools for extracting docs from the source. Regards,