From: Tom Ayerst <twa@...>
Date: 2005-04-28T03:09:34+09:00
Subject: Re: [OT] Comments Are More Important Than Code

Stephen Kellett wrote:
> In message <d4o6vp$qj2$4@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk>, Tom Ayerst 
> <twa@post.com> writes
> 
>> "I discard the radical position taken by proponents of extreme 
>> programming (XP) to get rid of 'unnecessary' documentation."
>>
>> To which you have to ask, "Why would you want to write unnecessary 
>> documentation? surely you have better things to do, like write 
>> necessary documentation?".
> 
> 
> That is a straw man, removing the quotes around the word unnecessary to 
> change the meaning. Clearly Raskin doesn't agree that it is unnecessary, 
> if he did he wouldn't have put the word in quotes.
> 

Kind of, but Raskin was distorting the XP position by putting the quotes 
in in the first place.  The XP position really is, "get rid of 
unnecessary documentation", which is quite sensible (huge amounts of 
documentation _is_ just written and never read, or left to get 
pathologically out of date.  By putting the quotes in, Raskin was trying 
to suggest that their definition of uneccessary was wrong, which is a 
quite legitimate debate to have, as I said further down.  But by being 
unable to resist having a poke at a methodology he doesn't like he moved 
the argument to a "do comment"/"don't comment" level.  Which was my point.

> I agree with your comment about "what comments are for".

Thanks, it works for me.

> 
> Stephen