I work with huge source trees written in C,C++ and Java, and with Doxygen you can use identical (or not) commenting styles and then let doxygen present the documentation in a nice way. I can automagically create html, man pages, LaTex, pdf, rtf and/or xml documents from mixtures of source code.... entirely flexible and configurable.
Power and ease of use aside, the real value I get from Doxygen is it's dual sided purpose: It can be used as a tool for development or as a straight public documentation generator. I can take a single source tree and at once generate a super hyperlinked code searcher and a high-level functional description document for non-coders (say your boss). It allows a developer to visually see the architecture of the system through graphical class hierarchies and then hyperlink *directly* to the source code that generated it. Far and away more mature than java-docs....
You get to the point of wanting to comment more, because the output that Doxygen generates based on your source code comments is so usefull and readable.
Get it, use it... it will make working on small parts of a large system easier.
Unless the CS person has some theory and or experience in Databases, they will of course be horrible at creating correct relational DB's. In my experience as a CS grad, I did not have to take ANY DB courses and so came out of school ready to tackle software engineering but not ready to design and implement slick tables. This is pretty common for MIS people to get tons of DB theory/internships/projects during school and the CS/CE people to get squat.
I've done database design and programming in the past. IT STINKS! There is a hard ceiling for creativity and you end up doing the same crap over and over. MIS grads can have all the DB work they want. I'll stick to using DB's as a tool in the overall design, not living in them! yek
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I don't get it .... what has he written?
I cannot say enough good things about Doxygen.
I work with huge source trees written in C,C++ and Java, and with Doxygen you can use identical (or not) commenting styles and then let doxygen present the documentation in a nice way. I can automagically create html, man pages, LaTex, pdf, rtf and/or xml documents from mixtures of source code.... entirely flexible and configurable.
Power and ease of use aside, the real value I get from Doxygen is it's dual sided purpose: It can be used as a tool for development or as a straight public documentation generator. I can take a single source tree and at once generate a super hyperlinked code searcher and a high-level functional description document for non-coders (say your boss). It allows a developer to visually see the architecture of the system through graphical class hierarchies and then hyperlink *directly* to the source code that generated it. Far and away more mature than java-docs....
You get to the point of wanting to comment more, because the output that Doxygen generates based on your source code comments is so usefull and readable.
Get it, use it... it will make working on small parts of a large system easier.
Unless the CS person has some theory and or experience in Databases, they will of course be horrible at creating correct relational DB's. In my experience as a CS grad, I did not have to take ANY DB courses and so came out of school ready to tackle software engineering but not ready to design and implement slick tables. This is pretty common for MIS people to get tons of DB theory/internships/projects during school and the CS/CE people to get squat. I've done database design and programming in the past. IT STINKS! There is a hard ceiling for creativity and you end up doing the same crap over and over. MIS grads can have all the DB work they want. I'll stick to using DB's as a tool in the overall design, not living in them! yek