On 8/9/07, Jonathan Bober <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I've been meaning to reply to this, since I've been specifically > mentioned. Sorry for the delay. > I also disagree with this, although not from much real job experience. > Probably, most code is poorly documented. This might just be because > documentation is often just an afterthought, and perhaps a boring > afterthought. > > > > > I think Jon Bober's code for number of partitions is a very nice > > > > example > > > > of how open source is so much better. > > > > > > Jon's code is a very good example of what everyone wants from code. > > > It certainly is not an example of open vs. closed source. > > Or I could be making up nonsense. Jon, why is your code so well > > documented? > > I would like to say that I always write like that, but unfortunately > that probably isn't true. Anyway, while I may be influenced by the fact > that other people might look at the code, it's just a simple fact that > well documented code is more maintainable. For example, it has been > about a week since I last really looked at that code, and if it was > poorly documented, then by now I probably would have forgotten how it > worked. > > The point about the pari code being poorly documented might also have > had some influence. For example, I didn't want to someone else to have > to search for Rademacher's paper, or to try to figure out just how to > reduce precision properly, etc.
So badly documented open source code (PARI) influenced you to produce better open source code. So in a sense it was the "open source" nature of PARI that was a significant influence on you creating better code. If we were to replace PARI by a closed system (e.g., Magma), you would have only had a command in that system, and no badly documented source code to be annoyed by. Conclusion: Existing open source code that is badly documented can sometimes lead people to write good open source code. Probably exactly the same thing is true of closed source code, in a closed system, e.g., someone working at Magma might document a new implementation of NumberOfPartitions much better than the old one, if the old one isn't well documented. This fits well with Justin's observations. Thanks for your comments (and code). -- William --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://sage.scipy.org/sage/ and http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
