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If the Comments Are Ugly, the Code Is Ugly
itwbennett writes "What do your comments say about your code? Do grammatical errors in comments point to even bigger errors in code? That's what Esther Schindler contends in a recent blog post. 'Programming, whether you're doing it as an open source enthusiast or because you're workin' for The Man, is an exercise in attention to detail,' says Schindler. 'Someone who writes software must be a nit-picker, or the code won't work ... Long-winded 'explanations' of the code in the application's comments (that is, the ones that read like excuses) indicate that the developer probably didn't understand what he was doing.'"
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You've obviously never actually built a real world building. You'd be damned surprised at how inexact so many things are. Something may measure 12 feet on the plans, you may take a 12 foot board to place and when you get there, you'll still cut it to fit or hammer it into place. Construction, even of your vaunted bridges is filled with hacks carried out at all levels of the build.
Software development typically isn't engineering. It's usually a business of maximizing productive features versus minimizing cost and time. Rarely is the answer to further investigate working code.
t
Also known as survivorship bias.