Throughout school (any major with programming really) there are many basic rules when coding like, keep things modular, use version control or comment your code. I want to mention a few bits about commenting:
First off, self commenting/documenting code is bs-99% of the time it is barely self documenting to the person who wrote it. Yeah, I might get flamed about this if people (the noob coders in general – *benjamin adds fuel to the fire) read my blog but I have not run into any code, save hello world tutorials, that was easily readable when uncommented. I have heard quotes of people, students in particular, who have claimed that not commenting is a great way for job security, which totally makes me ill-but again reiterates my thoughts.
Secondly, projects barely leave time for commenting. Yes, you could do it along the way, but if you had code/design which you did not have to re-visited hen you had too much time for a project or you were writing that hello world tutorial.
Thirdly, yeah this seems like a bitch and moan post, but there is something I do like about the little commenting that is done within a project. The best part about it is the personal notes which are put into the code, I know I do it all the time. Funnier quotes are those which claim a function isn’t working correctly and you don’t know if the function isn’t working or it wasn’t ever taken out-be it you or code you are maintaining. The error messages which state “Please Contact your Administrator” are always good for a laugh if you are not tearing your hair out atm. In web programming I have had my share of angry (now humorous) comments with browser compatibility, but I won’t name names (cough…IE…).
So, in closing-I think the left over comments are great fun seeing the life of a project (good luck maintaining them), perfect comments for the easy code that was written the first week of development, shifty-sometimes outright wrong comments for the majority of the code and those special functions that don’t ever seem to work right /* son of a #@*#@# i hate this &*!^@%# job*/.
Benjamin Willis
P.S. Overcommenting is teh suck.
P.S.S. Teachers don’t understand industry (yes, i did generalize the entire educational world)
Code Biography
Filed under: Ben Willis, Benjamin Willis, Code, Commenting |
First off, self commenting/documenting code is bs-99% of the time it is barely self documenting to the person who wrote it. Yeah, I might get flamed about this if people (the noob coders in general – *benjamin adds fuel to the fire) read my blog but I have not run into any code, save hello world tutorials, that was easily readable when uncommented. I have heard quotes of people, students in particular, who have claimed that not commenting is a great way for job security, which totally makes me ill-but again reiterates my thoughts.
Secondly, projects barely leave time for commenting. Yes, you could do it along the way, but if you had code/design which you did not have to re-visited hen you had too much time for a project or you were writing that hello world tutorial.
Thirdly, yeah this seems like a bitch and moan post, but there is something I do like about the little commenting that is done within a project. The best part about it is the personal notes which are put into the code, I know I do it all the time. Funnier quotes are those which claim a function isn’t working correctly and you don’t know if the function isn’t working or it wasn’t ever taken out-be it you or code you are maintaining. The error messages which state “Please Contact your Administrator” are always good for a laugh if you are not tearing your hair out atm. In web programming I have had my share of angry (now humorous) comments with browser compatibility, but I won’t name names (cough…IE…).
So, in closing-I think the left over comments are great fun seeing the life of a project (good luck maintaining them), perfect comments for the easy code that was written the first week of development, shifty-sometimes outright wrong comments for the majority of the code and those special functions that don’t ever seem to work right /* son of a #@*#@# i hate this &*!^@%# job*/.
Benjamin Willis
P.S. Overcommenting is teh suck.
P.S.S. Teachers don’t understand industry (yes, i did generalize the entire educational world)