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.