good read

[Sadhunathan Nadesan]

| I especially like this quote, which I think is good for the MC/Rev crowd.
| 
| "Programming languages should be designed to express algorithms, and only
| incidentally to tell computers how to execute them. A good programming
| language ought to (be) better for explaining software than English. You
| should only need comments when there is some kind of kludge you need to warn
| readers about, just as on a road there are only arrows on parts with
| unexpectedly sharp curves."


Hi

An alternate view:

Don't listen to that advice!

I especially, did _not_ like that one.  Sounds like programmer anarchy
to me.  Of course, I manage a group of programmers, and I know they'd
rather not put in lots of comments .. that is, UNTIL they have to maintain
someone else's code (or look back at something they wrote long ago,
and scratch their heads over it).  Yes, and if they leave the company,
management will be considered seriously deficient if we allowed them to
code without comments.

In one of our recent meetings, this very topic was discussed, in the
context of how to improve our code, and our process of creating software,
and the programming team came up with these solutions, amongst others
on their own : (these were not my suggestions).

	* every piece of code should be reviewed at least 3 times
	*
	* by the final pass, there should be comments about every ten
	* lines of code
	 

Love it!  Thing is, yes, a programming language should be used to
express things very clearly (long identifier names, etc), but still
it only tells the computer HOW to do things.  It doesn't tell WHY.
It doesn't explain the context.  Etc.  You need technical documentation
and comments for that.  

Sadhu Nadesan
CIO, Cast & Crew