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From: Malcolm McLean <malcolm.arthur.mclean@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Which newsgroup for json parsing?
Date: Wed, 29 May 2024 23:32:01 +0100
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On 29/05/2024 18:23, David Brown wrote:
> On 29/05/2024 18:14, Malcolm McLean wrote:
>> On 28/05/2024 12:45, Michael S wrote:
>>> On Tue, 28 May 2024 12:33:02 +0200
>>> Josef Möllers <josef@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 27.05.24 22:18, Vir Campestris wrote:
>>>>> On 27/05/2024 12:51, Josef Möllers wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In my 40+ years of experience in IT/programming (I graduated 1981
>>>>>> from a Dutch polytechnic "HIO" in Computer Science and have
>>>>>> retired in 2022) I have learnt that "works fine" is only part of
>>>>>> the work. Maintainability should be added as well. Even if it is
>>>>>> code written for one's personal use only, it may need some work
>>>>>> later and then it's crucial to have it maintainable.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But maybe you think so too,
>>>>>
>>>>> I agree completely.
>>>>>
>>>>> I learned my lesson a a student with a personal project which I
>>>>> left for 6 months. When I came back to it I had to comment it
>>>>> before I could carry on.
>>>>
>>>> You will never have enough comments, even when you consider this rule
>>>> ;-)
>>>>
>>>
>>> Probably true.
>>> And despite that you can very easily have too much (or too many?)
>>> comments.
>>>
>> People have done some research and found that comments tend to make 
>> code harder to understand and maintain. Unfortunately as always I can 
>> only vaguely remeember reading this somewhere and can't provide any 
>> sort of reference.
> 
> Too many comments make code hard to read - too much of a good thing is 
> always bad.  (That's what "too much" means.)
> 
> The key, IMHO, is not to use comments when the same thing can be 
> expressed in code.  And don't use comments to repeat things that are 
> obvious in the code.  If a variable needs a comment to say what it is, 
> it's a sign that the variable should have a better name.  It's better to 
> use an assert (static if possible) than to write a comment about the 
> state of variables.  It's better to write clearer code than write 
> comments about what the code is doing.
> 
> Bad comments like those are a pain for maintenance - you often have to 
> double up the effort when fixing things, because you need to change the 
> code /and/ the comment.  In practice, comments often get out of sync and 
> then they are worse than useless.
> 
> Of course you want comments to talk about /why/ code is doing what it is 
> doing, since that is usually not possible to express in the code itself.
> 
Currently I'm writing a lot of little test programs to show off my XML 
parser. They are of course also intended to be used as templates for 
anybody who wants to use it. But I haven't decided on a commenting 
policy. The comments are inconsistent and a bit of a mess.

-- 
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