I would say that the comments should be less concerned about the
"what" and more concerned about the "why"
(unless they are javadoc) , leaving the "how" and most of the "what"
to the code itself.
On Apr 16, 8:57 am, Matt Scully wrote:
> The only thing I would add is that comments describe what t
The only thing I would add is that comments describe what the code did
at a single point in time and the code itself describes what it did.
I always appreciate a helpful comment, but I give preference to
renaming variables and extracting methods before adding comments. One
helpful comment is refe
Turns out that the build system has RSS but they never turned it on. With
this success I'm emboldened to ask them to do a couple other things and see
how far I can go.
On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 6:52 PM, Peter Becker wrote:
>
> On a more technical note: if your VCS is Subversion, Mercurial or Git
>
On a more technical note: if your VCS is Subversion, Mercurial or Git
look into trac as a provider of said RSS feeds (plus more). It also
allows wiki syntax in the commit messages (including links into other
commits or to issues), which makes writing commit messages more fun :-)
It's also pret
I think we agree at some level.
Recently I have been bombarded with changes that break what I am working on.
I spend most of my time fixing my code because they changed a method
signature, deleted a class, etc. No comments on why, just lots of changes.
An RSS feed would be ideal for this project
There is a danger that if comments are enforced in any position you get
people to write stupid comments by habit after about a week and they
stop thinking about what they write completely.
But usually I find that once you put your commit messages into an RSS
feed, newsgroup or mailing list peo
Further back in this thread it was mentioned that typos are obvious and no
comment is needed.
I would rather see a long winded comment than none at all.
I would rather see a dumb comment than none at all.
I would rather see tons of comments about what stuff is doing than have to
become a human com
I agree with you completely.
However, as we all know, there are places that have horrible practices and
you soon realize
that you need to leave the company because no viable change will ever
happen.
On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 9:02 AM, Viktor Klang wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 4:56 PM, Ryan
On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 4:56 PM, Ryan Waterer wrote:
> In my experience, some developers are more concerned about their quantity
> of
> code output. These developers are usually too busy to explain the what,
> the how
> or the why anywhere -- not in the javadoc, not in the checkin comments, not
In my experience, some developers are more concerned about their quantity
of
code output. These developers are usually too busy to explain the what, the
how
or the why anywhere -- not in the javadoc, not in the checkin comments, not
in any
documentation, and not in comments. As such, these deve
On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 06:07:54AM -0700, Reinier Zwitserloot wrote:
>
> The staunch refusal of most VCSes to not allow you to entire an empty
> commit is actually a mistake, I think. For example, git commit will
> abort the commit if you leave the message blank. For sufficiently
> small commits,
The staunch refusal of most VCSes to not allow you to entire an empty
commit is actually a mistake, I think. For example, git commit will
abort the commit if you leave the message blank. For sufficiently
small commits, the VCS should just cook up a message based on the
diff. The 'why' is not alway
On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 06:24:30PM +1000, Peter Becker wrote:
>
> Very good point. I notice this difference a lot in commit messages:
> quite often they are written in a way that is entirely redundant with
> the diff you get. That might make sense for large commits (kind of like
> an executive
comments that explain business rules that couldn't
>> possibly be inferred from the code. Even if you can see what it's
>> doing, sometime you need to know why.
>>
>> On Apr 14, 8:11 am, Peter Becker wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Alexey Zinger
d from the code. Even if you can see what it's
> doing, sometime you need to know why.
>
> On Apr 14, 8:11 am, Peter Becker wrote:
>
> > Alexey Zinger wrote:
> > > --- On Sun, 4/12/09, Peter Becker wrote:
>
> > >> From: Peter Becker
> &
ed to know why.
On Apr 14, 8:11 am, Peter Becker wrote:
> Alexey Zinger wrote:
> > --- On Sun, 4/12/09, Peter Becker wrote:
>
> >> From: Peter Becker
> >> Subject: [The Java Posse] Re: Code definition
> >> To: javaposse@googlegroups.com
> >> Date
Alexey Zinger wrote:
> --- On Sun, 4/12/09, Peter Becker wrote:
>
>
>> From: Peter Becker
>> Subject: [The Java Posse] Re: Code definition
>> To: javaposse@googlegroups.com
>> Date: Sunday, April 12, 2009, 1:12 AM
>> Alexey Zinger wrote:
>>
On 13 Apr 2009, at 14:26, Alexey Zinger wrote:
> Call it what you wish, but I think of it as a situation, where I am
> taking a step in the direction of obscurity for some specific reason
> (to me, it's not always a bad reason) and compensate for it with
> clear and concise comments. I thin
--- On Sun, 4/12/09, Peter Becker wrote:
> From: Peter Becker
> Subject: [The Java Posse] Re: Code definition
> To: javaposse@googlegroups.com
> Date: Sunday, April 12, 2009, 1:12 AM
> Alexey Zinger wrote:
> > --- On Fri, 4/10/09, Dominic Mitchell
> wrote:
>
Alexey Zinger wrote:
> --- On Fri, 4/10/09, Dominic Mitchell wrote:
>
>
>> From: Dominic Mitchell
>> Subject: [The Java Posse] Re: Code definition
>> To: javaposse@googlegroups.com
>> Date: Friday, April 10, 2009, 11:35 AM
>> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 1
Dominic Mitchell wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 10:20:32AM -0400, Robert Hanson wrote:
>
>> Every Perl program I have ever written falls into that category. Six
>> months later I can't even figure out how it works.
>>
>
> Believe me, Perl isn't unique in that category. There's a *lot*
--- On Fri, 4/10/09, Dominic Mitchell wrote:
> From: Dominic Mitchell
> Subject: [The Java Posse] Re: Code definition
> To: javaposse@googlegroups.com
> Date: Friday, April 10, 2009, 11:35 AM
> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 10:20:32AM -0400, Robert Hanson
> wrote:
> > Every
On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 10:20:32AM -0400, Robert Hanson wrote:
> Every Perl program I have ever written falls into that category. Six
> months later I can't even figure out how it works.
Believe me, Perl isn't unique in that category. There's a *lot* of
really incomprehensible Java out there.
Every Perl program I have ever written falls into that category. Six
months later I can't even figure out how it works.
Rob
On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 9:46 AM, Viktor Klang wrote:
> A dear colleague of mine just coined a new expression,
>
> Him: "This code totally escapes me"
> Me: "What?"
> Him
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