From: Jon Babcock <jon@...>
Date: 2000-10-15T00:59:33+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:5536] Re: 2 ideas from Haskell

>>>>> "Dave" == Dave Thomas <Dave@thomases.com> writes:

    > We actually wrote about the dangers of over-commenting in
    > Pragmatic Programmer. In fact, in a past life I used to be a
    > person who wrote moe comments than code. I had beautifully
    > formated comment blocks everywhere, and emacs marcos that let me
    > edit them. Then one day I realized that whenever I changed a
    > program, I was spending more time maintaining the comments than
    > the code, and the only time I ever read the comments was when I
    > was changing them. So I tried cutting back, and I've found that
    > I don't miss them at all.

But I wonder how you would evaluate the _pedagogic_ value that writing
those comments has had for you?

(My son, Michael, has been writing a new, Linux-based, control system
for puppets at Henson's Creature Shop in L.A. for a couple years, all
in C++, and when I asked him about comments, his response was close to
what Dave has said; he uses them very sparsely and with the same
rationale. But he admitted, albeit reluctantly, that writing comments
while at university helped him learn to C++, C, etc.)


Jon

-- 
Jon Babcock <jon@kanji.com>