good read

[andu]

--On Monday, May 12, 2003 11:02:26 -0700 Sadhunathan Nadesan 
<sadhu at castandcrew.com> wrote:

>| 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.

I think you took a line out of context; what you are saying is true for 
most existing languages specially low level, what the author was talking 
about was how languages *should* be and I agree with him. The fact that 
Xtalk is the only one closest to what people use to communicate to 
one-another (at least in some countries) is a crime.
Talking about "high-tech cave men"...;-)

>
> Sadhu Nadesan
> CIO, Cast & Crew
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Regards, Andu Novac