Alexey Zinger wrote: > --- On Fri, 4/10/09, Dominic Mitchell <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> From: Dominic Mitchell <[email protected]> >> Subject: [The Java Posse] Re: Code definition >> To: [email protected] >> Date: Friday, April 10, 2009, 11:35 AM >> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 10:20:32AM -0400, Robert Hanson >> wrote: >> >>> Every Perl program I have ever written falls into that >>> >> category. Six >> >>> months later I can't even figure out how it works. >>> >> Believe me, Perl isn't unique in that category. >> There's a *lot* of >> really incomprehensible Java out there. Sure the >> individual lines might >> be readable (if you're lucky) but the program as a >> whole is unreal. >> >> -Dom >> > > Unless I'm in a real time crunch, I try to step back after getting the first > working version of something and look over what I just wrote. If I see > something that's gonna be confusing later (weird work-arounds, subtle > diversions from familiar patterns or conventions, or techniques I use very > rarely), I simply write comments. I've found certain things to come up time > and again that require explanation, where the source is not expressive enough > for a casual code reader. Regular expressions are a common case, especially > in Perl, where they are often not accompanied by expressive variable names > (99% of the time a good example of what you're trying to match does the > trick). In Java, I've lately found some hidden traps in using GWT, where > what looks like good Java will break or have unexpected behavior or > performance. Comments are your friend. > It sounds like the type of comment I consider a code smell. If you need to explain what your code does it might be time to refactor the code into something legible. Of course there are exceptions, e.g. if you need some stunts for that last bit of performance (assuming you need that last bit of performance in the first place), but in most cases I get suspicious if I see code with a lot of inline comments.
But I guess to some extent it is a matter of style and also how much you are allowed to dig in and change the whole code to something different. Peter --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
