On Apr 27, 2005, at 4:26 PM, Bill Guindon wrote: > When I come across somebody else's code, and think, "geeze why didn't > he just call the db library, and use the built in functions? rolling > his own here is just asinine!"... then I start refactoring, only to > find out that the db library functions don't work in this case... > that's when I _wish_ the first coder had commented "rolled my own db > access due to db library not supporting feature xyz". I think this illustrates the difference between "comments are evil" and "comments are a symptom." In the situation above, the comments are a symptom. But they would have been valuable. What they are a symptom of is that the real problem lies elsewhere, and the roll-your-own code here is also just a symptom of that. Kent Beck never said comments were evil. He just said they are a symptom. Sometimes symptoms and doctor's notes on them are a very good thing to have. That said, they are also something you wish you could do without! --Peter -- There's neither heaven nor hell, save what we grant ourselves. There's neither fairness nor justice, save what we grant each other.