Unruh wrote: > "Richard B. Gilbert" <[email protected]> writes: > >> David Woolley wrote: >>> Joseph Gwinn wrote: >>>> We have moved from the meaning of status code 9514 to the more general >>> But you should have kept the thread, even if the subject changed. >>> >>>> issue of how NTP shall be supported, so I've collected the relevant >>>> threads below. >>>> More generally, it's hopeless to expect the world's sysadmins to read >>>> NTP code (or any other kind of code). They just don't have the time, >>> Generally, you only need to read a small bit of code to answer this sort >>> of question, but if you haven't got the time you should pay someone who >>> does have the time. > >> The ntpd distribution is about 70,000 lines of code! Expecting people >> to be able to find their way around is not realistic! Before the user >> can read that "small bit of code", he has to FIND it. He has to find it >> in 70,000 lines of code. Since the number "9514" may never appear >> anywhere in the code since it's a "bit mapped" value, what is the reader >> supposed to look for? > > Well, while that is true, grep can be your friend. Thus especially in an > output messages, grepping for that message will often send you to the right > place in that 70000 lines of code. >
It's of little use for situations like this. I will look for a particular string but bitcodes are not something you will find. >> A computer program is not just a series of instructions to be executed >> by the machine, it is also a document that must be understood by human >> beings! > > Agreed. > On the other hand the programmer is usually worried first about getting the > bloody code working, so spending a lot of time documenting something you > will probably change tomorrow seems pointless, and once the 5000 lines have > been written and debugged, it is far too late at night to document. Which is why a good programmer always documents the code as they write it. I always do. I may add additional documentation as I review it but it's always done as I go. Nothing else makes sense. Danny -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. _______________________________________________ questions mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
