Orchid XP v8 schrieb:
> 
> Method #2 suffers from the problem that there's so much chatter in the 
> source file that you can't actually find the executable code any more. 
> It makes small, simple modules look huge and complex.
> 
My experience is that that's not the case.

To the contrary: Breaking up the source code with commenting blocks 
helps give the code more structure, even if you don't change a single 
statement.

> I can't think of a good way to solve this. Sure, you could have some IDE 
> where when you change a file, you can add a note to self to update the 
> documentation. But if the human forgets to add that note...

In any case I guess we agree that the problem of documentation needs to 
be addressed not by programming /languages/, but by programming 
/environments/.

I guess the ideal solution would be an IDE that is capable of managing 
hypertextual RTF documents alongside with code, highly integrated with 
the version management software, and for each change would ask: "What 
was the nature of your code change, Dave?" - being smart enough to 
identify which functions were actually changed, and also which ones 
might be affected indirectly.

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