Re: Documenting your programs for future reference... how do you do it?

> You don't comment any UserRPL progs. It's wasting of time. Next time you
> need a program to do the same thing, you just write a better one. It's
> always good brain exercize. This is how it works for me :)

I'd consider "reinventing the wheel" to be a bigger waste of time. If I've
written a
great Fourier routine, why not reuse it in future projects requiring one?
Do you
program professionally? I do and I know that documentation isn't really
for you right now but for the next person who has to maintain your code.
(which may be you a year from now) I've really appreciated
programmers who document their code and try to be as considerate of them
as they were of me. I agree that an interpreted language is no place for
comments
which slow down the program but in a compiled language, they're free so why
not use them? In any case, documentation can sometimes point out flaws in
overall
logic or usability. As for writing a better one next time, sometimes I get
so clever
the first time that if I don't write down what I did, I can never recreate
the exact
method I used the first time. True, sometimes I can write a better routine
if I start
from scratch but sometimes I can never quite recapture the elegance of a
former
routine. It's after that happened a few times that I learned to document,
document,
document. Now, I can go back over my notebooks and sometimes see how the
old
routines can be improved but sometimes I can be reminded of tricks I'd
learned long
ago but have forgotten over time. Most programmers tend to fall into a
habit of using
a convenient subset of a language and can use a refresher in the full
capabilities of any
language.

Tom Lake


.

Relevant Pages