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From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: The Last Word on Comments (was Re: Hungarian notation)
Date: 1996/07/11
Message-ID: <dewar.837119172@schonberg>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 167938616
references: <31bf6e29.185297643@netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov>
 <Pine.GSO.3.92.960613161305.19571A-100000@nunic.nu.edu>
 <31C685A1.F1@wgs.estec.esa.nl> <4q79lr$ju5@panix3.panix.com>
 <Dt9E05.Cvq@mv.mv.com> <dewar.835244765@schonberg>
 <4r1bdp$3ib@nntp.seflin.lib.fl.us> <dewar.836014702@schonberg>
 <4s3397$9ih@nntp.seflin.lib.fl.us>
organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
newsgroups: 
 comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.modula3,comp.lang.modula2,comp.edu,comp.lang.eiffel
Date: 1996-07-11T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Ralph said

"        if this is restricted to
                working code
                ^^^^^^^^^^^^
        then
                code
        as distinct from
                comments,
        certainly,
        is
                authoritative
        in a way"

Sorry, I totally reject this notion. Just because code is working does
not mean that it is correct in the sense of meeting its internal
specifications. If a procedure is supposed to do xxx, and is documented
to do xxx, but actually does yyy, but it doesn't matter because in the
current incarnation of the program (perhaps due to canceling bugs), it is
OK that the procedure does yyy and does not affect the results, then the
program STILL HAS A BUG! Furthermore it is a pernicious bug, because it
is the sort of bug that causes "harmless" maintenance changes to make
everything fall apart.

Note this can be true even in the absence of explicit comments. For
example if a routine called greater_than, actually computes less_than, 
but at the time the routine is used, everyone "knew" it was wrong,
and fudged the calls, but no one documented what was going on, then
you definitely have bugs in the program, and they are bugs that will
cause real maintenance headaches.