Re: Cargo Cult Membership

In message <pan.2006.07.04.20.56.47.199172@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Mark Isaak <eciton_NOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
On Sun, 02 Jul 2006 13:38:56 -0700, rupert.morrish@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Augray wrote:
On Sat, 1 Jul 2006 22:28:00 -0500, "bullpup" <bullpup@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote in <f3Hpg.28440$gv2.25415@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> :

>http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/column.php?id=73181

I would suggest that this essay is, well, flawed. For instance, the
writer states that

Cargo Cult thinking is very much alive today, and particularly
susceptible to it are computer programmers.

However, his knowledge of programming seems suspect:

Those who write Cargo cult programs explain their useless code as
a way of working around a certain computer bug, whose origins
they know nothing about. A classic example are programmers who
think that using commenting code is good, and then produce every
line with comments such as "increment i by 1". The result is a
lot of bad, problematic computer coding that can screw up a lot
of things.

However, commenting code has no influence on the final program. The
comments are there to explain your programming rationale to yourself,
or any other programmer, five years from now when the code has to be
modified or debugged.

No, the author is correct. Useless comments, like:

// increment i by one
i++;

are a /symptom/ of cargo cult programming.

I think the worst example I saw was:

#define TWO 2

#define FOUR 6

(Yes I really have seen the equivalent of this - written in CORAL, and I don't recall the exact values.)

most likely from someone who had been told never to hard-code constants.


--
alias Ernest Major


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