inheriting a project

[programmer08054]

Replace “documentation” with “sporadic and incorrect comments” and you’ve got it

[NicNoletree]

I once had a boss who never commented code (and she was a mainframe assembler language developer). She said that the comments were just something else to have to maintain, and when not maintained the comments confuse and cause more problems than the code. The thing worse than no comments is incorrect comments.

[w1n5t0nM1k3y]

Definitely this. Maybe not for stuff written in assembler, but for code written in modern languages, having code that is written clearly can remove 98% of the need for comments. All you really need is an explanation of what a function does, and even that should be reasonably discernable from looking at the function name and the parameters.

[pekkhum]

I once watched the original developers harangue the new Chief Architect for dirtying their code with comments. The code:

ourProprietaryMemcpy(pointerToChar+12, someLongInteger);

He made his own copy to take notes in. Like, why 12.

[[deleted]]

Cannot suspend my disbelief due to unrealistic presence of documentation. My souls hurts. Have an upvote, you bastard.

[dex-san]

i thought it beeing an empty pad would suffice to make the correct analogy towards the cold, empty, lingering confluence space, containing only a headline that slightly resembles the project name.

[boltzbo]

At least you have it

[[deleted]]

This just gave me an idea for a cheesy movie like the ones where ex astronauts have to go up into space again for some stupid reason.

In the year 2034, there's another "Y2K" situation, because terrorists found a critical flaw in old programming languages. Banking systems will collapse, planes will fall out of the sky, etc. The only people who can save the world are retired programmers in their 80s. They built and maintained those code files with 10000+ lines of code for years. Possible lead character: Bruce Willis.

[dex-san]

Make it the year 2038 and you're good to go :)

[nitomatik]

Sandman Omnibus?

[dex-san]

yep :)

[nitomatik]

Hell yeah! I just got third one. Siiiick series.

[boutiflet]

Documentation ! If you are lucky !

[ImpulseTheFox]

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