On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 3:00 PM, Kurt Wendt <kurtwe...@waitex.com> wrote:
> > I say - in certain instances - yeah - people should put more comments in > code - especially cause some people don't bother to use variable names > that make sense (which I always try to do - even if the names end up > being longer!) - or write cryptic code. > I did a lot of Fox maintenance, 1987-2004. I did a presentation "Software Maintenance" back in 2000. I included a program, ProjScan, that I used to gather some basic statistics about a project: number and types of files, lines of code, lines of comments. A client had asked me what the ratio of code to comments in their project was. Interestingly, the "good" projects I could test had ratios of around 7:1. Poor projects were 3:1 or 20:1. Doug Hennig's Data Dictionary, at the time some of the best code out there, scored 7:1. Now, this is a classic YMMV story. I've audited client's projects that had a good metric and all the comments turned out to be commented code. I have seen... well, bucketloads of war stories. And comments can be garbage, of course. x=1 && set x to one Ideally, comments express intent and context, not a direct translation of what the code obviously does. If anyone's interested, code, badly-translated Word-to-HTML paper and slides can be found at http://www.tedroche.com/papers.php, under '2000' and 'Software Maintenance' -- Ted Roche Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/z2mc9415b011004081745sf12b33a6xe378e89ecf37d...@mail.gmail.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
