On Dec 29, 3:15 am, Rich Hickey <richhic...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Dec 28, 8:13 pm, "Mark Volkmann" <r.mark.volkm...@gmail.com> wrote: >
> I'll not argue for making code harder to read, but I have to object to > most of your example. > > Making something 4x longer does not make it easier to read. > > Redundant comments are useless. This is the excuse continually trotted out by people too lazy to comment, or who think themselves superior to merely mortal programmers who have to work in teams and actually communicate with people. Redundancy in communication is almost never redundant; think of it as a checksum. When you listen to someone talking naturally and explaining something, you'll almost always find they express the same idea multiple times in different forms of words. Why? It makes certain that it is clear. I'm not denying there are occasions where comments add nothing to the reader's understanding of the code. But they are usually not cases where the comment repeats (in English or some other natural language) what is being expressed in Lisp or Java or XSLT or whatever. Repetition is not in itself bad. On the contrary, it can be explicitly good, because places where what's written in the comment describes something different from what's described in the code are probably places for bugs. I've never, in my life, worked with another programmer who commented too much. I've once in my life worked with another programmer who commented enough. In my experience, if you take over someone else's code either to maintain it or to integrate it or to reuse components from it, you're normally in for a huge learning process which would have been obviated simply by adequate commenting. 'Redundant comments are useless' is the mantra of the dilettante, the amateur, and the cowboy. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
