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Re: [OT] Commenting source code (was Re: Problems with Controls Manager)

On 8/28/03 9:54 AM, M. Uli Kusterer didst favor us with:

> True. Entirely my point. Both can be tweaked, both can be wrong. But
> writing English (or German, or ...) is much easier to most of us, and
> is much more likely to tell us something we didn't notice than
> tweaking the code. Simply because most of us speak natural language
> all day, while using code only a few hours a day on the job. And
> because language is so different from the code, that we have to think
> from a different vantage point when writing that.

By this logic, programmers should be the best people to write user guides.
;-)

Unfortunately a lot of people can't write very well. What they write will be
clear to *them* when they write it, but it may not be clear to others or
even to them at a later time.

This reminds me of something that happened years ago when I was still
married and our kids were very young. At those ages kids outgrow clothes
quickly, so my wife had put some of my son's clothes in a grocery bag, taped
it closed, labeled it so we'd know what was in the bag and put it up in the
attic. I happened upon that bag one day when I was up in the attic and it
was labeled, "David's clothes, this winter." "This winter" was clear to her
when she wrote it, but not to me when I read it. Of course, she wasn't a
programmer., her degree was in English literature. Go figure. ;-)

Larry
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 >Re: [OT] Commenting source code (was Re: Problems with Controls Manager) (From: "M. Uli Kusterer" <email@hidden>)



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