On 29-5-2011 2:47, Gregory Ewing wrote: > Irmen de Jong wrote: > >> I don't see how that is opposed to what Grant was saying. It's that these >> 'contracts' >> tend to change and that people forget or are too lazy to update the comments >> to reflect >> those changes. > > However, I can't see that deleting the comment documenting the > contract can be the right response to the situation. > > If the contract comment doesn't match what code does, then > there are two possibilities -- the comment is wrong, or the > code is wrong. The appropriate response is to find out which > one is wrong and fix it.
Fair enough. Certainly I won't be deleting every source code comment encountered from now on, but I do think we should keep in mind the risks already mentioned. In some situations I can very well imagine it is best to simply delete any comments and go with just the code. > If you simply delete the comment, then you're left with no > redundancy to catch the fact that something is wrong. You are right, if you don't have a Unit test for it. Then again, faulty unit tests are a problem in their own right... Irmen de Jong -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
