I am in the middle here - In porting the same apps over 20 years through several operating systems and editors and programming environments and source control systems and also reforming new companies along the way I have came to believe that any documentation outside of the program source and help files eventually just gets lost or hopelessly out of date.
Looking after large legacy systems with many modules which a number of programmers had worked on it was always useful to know who did what in case I wanted to follow up why something was done a certain way...as the programmers concerned in the main were contactable. Usually in the form of a comment block at the head of a module, who wrote it, when, and any relevant technical descriptions of why it was implemented this way. When you spend much of your life maintaining other peoples code you get very grateful for the professional and helpful people who do set things out clearly, and have an option to chase them up to save time when altering the routine. The extreme example was one package where the variables had different names and declarations from one program to another, the programmer concerned wrote not one single comment in his code, and liked naming variables with names like B320 B330 B340 etc. He was a superb programmer who believed code should be read to find what it does, and also liked reading object files directly.....if you are lucky you wouldn't be maintaining his code, it was hard to improve in all senses. John -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Richard Vowles Sent: Friday, 5 May 2006 12:53 p.m. To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List Subject: RE: [DUG] Naming your code It should be in the version control check-in anyway so you know who to blame. The only reason it isn't in my code is I can't be bothered putting it there. It is there on templated code. (a dedicated subversion user). How about people change subject lines to match what we are talking about. --- Richard Vowles, Solutions Architect, Borland New Zealand email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone: +64-9-9184573 cell: +64-21-467747 other: MSN [EMAIL PROTECTED], skype: rvowles blog: http://www.usergroup.org.nz/blogs/selectBlog.html?id=39769 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kyley Harris Sent: Thursday, 4 May 2006 11:42 p.m. To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List Subject: RE: [DUG] In case you're interested (or buy stuff) Correct. Many companies that rely on contractors to fulfill work do not want temp employess, etc to see a name, and go tell the competition who they should contact for good design work. So in that case it is valid to request unsigned work. If you really want to assert that you wrote something. Get a reference in writing on letterhead that cannot be disputed by future managers, employees etc. Get the letter to state unequivocally what input you had such as design, implementation, delployment. NEVER rely on an interviewer calling someone. I make a point of providing no verbal references unless that person giving the ref would die for me, or close :D _______________________________________________ Delphi mailing list [email protected] http://ns3.123.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi __________ NOD32 1.1461 (20060329) Information __________ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. http://www.eset.com _______________________________________________ Delphi mailing list [email protected] http://ns3.123.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi
