On 4/19/2011 19:01, Jim Henderson wrote:
> that that's what comments are for. ;)

Comments help with localized pieces of code. If I hand you something like 
Apache or Outlook or the Linux kernel, in-line comments are not going to 
tell you what order to read code in to learn how it works.  Especially if 
fixing some specific bug is your first task. Sure, someone can show you 
*this* piece of code parses configuration files and *that* piece of code 
handles authentication, but that's a person showing you that, or hours 
wandering around looking for an anchor. And that's even assuming the code is 
well structured to start with.

And once it grows, you're just screwed. I mean, really, something like the 
Linux kernel is really a fairly small system compared to some of the big 
systems out there.  (There it is. Linux is 14 million lines of code. AT&T 
TURKS is 100 million lines of *SQL*, let alone all the systems that use it.)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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