commenting, was Re: Use of declare blocks

[tmoran@acm.org]

> even when their meaning seemed obvious to me. In particular, when their
> meaning seemed obvious. As you say, it won't stay obvious, and
> the programmer's knowledge at the time of writing is lost with
> the missing comment and has to be regained.
    I'd like comments that are fuller as the code gets older.
    I've long wanted a system that each day would find those files that
are, say, two days old and it would ask me to either delete or give a
(very) short description (but longer than an 8.3 file name!).  Files that
haven't been accessed in two weeks would either be deleted or it would
require me to give a somewhat longer description.  Similarly after two
months, with a description that would make sense two years from now.
This would have to be system-enforced, since I can't bring myself to
do it manually (and sometimes it isn't clear how long certain files
will continue to exist anyway).
It would be nice to do something similar with source code and comments.