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Auto Code Commenting Software, Free Chairs
sien writes "When you think about it, code is usually fairly mundane and simple. Finally someone has come up with a parser and lexer that actually auto-comments code, allowing for vastly more rapid coding. This amazing new tool is called The Commentator and claims to analyse source code as it's being written and insert the necessary code comments. It's absolutely amazing. Also the problem of seating for eXtreme Programming has finally been solved."
Won't someone please think of the children!
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
That chair is not big enough for some men's asses.
I sure hope this 2-person seat can handle a 500-pound couch potato, otherwise my partner will by flying.
That chair -- the "PairOn" -- is it for intimate co-workers, siamese twins or for people with big, fat asses?
Beauty, this will replace the legions of QA people that used to do my code commenting
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
But I can't help but think how this could ruin some programmers. There are some programmers who live by documenting their work before they actually write it, as a guide to what they do. In fact, in my assembly language class, they say this is the best way to do it (not true IMHO, but oh well). besides, don't you just get a thrill out of documenting a finished routine, going to compile it, and realize you copy/pasted over a large chunk of code? or, more likely, forgetting an end tag and commenting out half of your storage?
The fun of April fool's articles used to be picking the genuinely fake article amongst a whole heap of bizarre but true stories.
But this is just becoming boring.
Good code doesn't require comments - the variable names should tell you everything you need to know about the program.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
This is the first funny article of the day. I like the self-importance option. In truth, a tool like this is impossible to actually write, but it would be cool since I never comment my code. But I don't comment for job security and I hate my coworkers. Just kiddin'
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
I wonder if it will read the code commentary aloud in John Madden's voice for extra money?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Perhaps it will be opposite this year? Picking the true article out of the heaps of really bad fakes?
You don't exist. Go away.
Ok, obviously /. has implemented an Auto April Fools Submittal mechanism.
/. staff are actually at work today, the AAFS is handling all of these submissions automagically.
None of the
Come on 12am...
Goofy, Geeky Gifts and More!
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Very good humor! But on a more serious note, this is actually part of the problem with some comments. They duplicate the code. Comments like
// increment i by one
i++;
really slow down the comprehesion level of most competent programers, because they have to filter out a lot of redundacy. Comment on purpose, on the more general function of things, etc. An automated program, could only really comment on the code that was there, and likely in an obvious way.
Not to detract from the marvelous humor of the 'article' but it was a good demonstration of the problem.
Good programmers never comment their code; it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
I've never understood why people do things like this. Why not do something useful: specify what's a valid or invalid value of newHome, say when it should or should not be called. Or just leave it blank if you can't find something useful to say.
Every year slashdot does this, every year people complain. The joke is being fooled into complaining. The joke is people revisit the site like every normal day hoping for it to end and it doesn't. The editors are having a laugh at YOUR expense and you don't even know it.
Relax, go over to Fark, who's random joke page can actually be amusing and read about the Pope being note quite dead yet and come back to Slashdot tomorrow. If you actually miss anything real, you can read it then.
Burn Hollywood Burn
I can look at any piece of code in any project I've worked on and see what the code technically does. What I can't do is look at something and say "Ah, this criteria exists in the code because of business rule #275 for customer X." Almost all my comments are related to business rules and what I'm trying to accomplish. There is no way an autocomment tool could analyze the code for the business rules I use.
The PHB wants to order these so he has a place to sit while micromanaging.
Best regards.
//TODO: remove this comment
word.
Damn you April Fool's Day! ;)
I guess we'd better cancel Sense of Humor Day too, then.
I agree, but this one is actually pretty funny if you read it (and are a programmer).
Real programmers don't comment. If you did that someone might actually be able to figure out what you are doing. You need a code obfuscate function that takes simple functions and makes them complex and adds nonsensical comments, such as:
... A[i] ...;
//Super Froopy node generator //Charge the Interociter ... A[(i-3)/8] ...; //null node generator
Before:
int i = 1;
while (i 1000) {
i ++;
}
After:
int i=11;
while (i 8003) {
i += 8;
}
Now that's a death ray!
bitterness=9,profanity on
:)
major lol
--
Toby
...and it's just not true.
/* FALLTHROUGH */ can tell sourch code analyzers such as Lint some useful information too. (Not to mention the programmer that looks at your code and has to think for a sec "did he mean to leave out the break there?")
Good variable names (class names, function names, etc.) go a long way: they tell you a lot about WHAT the program is doing. (I would argue that they can't always say everything too, but that's another matter.)
However, they don't tell you WHY you are doing what you are doing.
Also, remember there are other reasons for comments besides people reading your code. JavaDoc/Doxygen comments allow documentation to be produced right from the source. Comments such as
10 PRINT "Hello World" 'what a novice
20 END 'boy I'm glad that's over
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I suspect that you're trolling, but that is a Javadoc comment. The comment text, "Sets the Home to a new value," will be used as the method's description in the automatically generated HTML documentation.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
PLEASE MOD THIS (and other similar posts) DOWN, this has been in every single article today, and he has got mod points in each one.
See user's other posts at
http://slashdot.org/~Urgo