hi... haven't followed the entire thread.. just saw this portion that pertains to comments.... i can only assume you guys are relatively young.. if you ever have to pick up a piece of code that was developed 10 years ago, and you need to track down/test/get back into production in a matter of a few days, then you had better pray that the code was either 1) carefully used the variable declarations in a matter that you understand, or 2) that the code has copious comments at both the functional level as well as the line/section level, and that the routines discussed the functions that use the routine, as well as where the inputs are coming from, and going to... there's a huge difference in dealing with something that runs a small website, and something that controls a processing line, where if you screw it up, you're going to cost $5K/hour when the code is screwing up!!!! my $0.02 worth.... ps. keep in mind, one person's clear code declarations can be complete garbage to another person, and you forget why in the hell you did something over time... clear code comments are a way to (hopefully) make sense of what the overall chunk of code is supposed to accomplish!! -----Original Message----- From: Brian P. Giroux [mailto:bpg@xxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Sunday, January 14, 2007 8:30 AM To: php-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Normalized Numbers Robert Cummings wrote: > On Fri, 2007-01-12 at 14:40 +0000, Roman Neuhauser wrote: >> I know it sounds crazy, but (most) comments are evil. Comments are are >> excuses for better code, they're often no more than a vague repetition >> of what the code says. If the code doesn't describe what it's doing >> while it's doing it, then the code should be fixed. > > Amen. > > There are not that many cases were comments are actually useful. > Generally when necessary they give a brief summary of what is intended > or they clarify ambiguity or specialized techniques. Well chosen > variable and function names cause the code to practically comment > itself. > > I think the discipline of using longer and more descriptive > variable/function/class names is far more helpful than commenting every > second line of code with the obvious. > >>> 2 // check if th function was passed only a single character >>> 3 if(1==strlen($cd)) { > > Ummm, DUH! :) I guess some of the comments are a little obvious. > Cheers, > Rob. -- Brian P. Giroux Sénécal & Associé.e.s / Associates Recherche et marketing / Research and marketing Tél : (705) 476-9667 Fax : (705) 476-1618 www.senecal.ca -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
