mindful iterations: A Baby-Programmer's Opinions on Coding - Part I

A Baby-Programmer's Opinions on Coding - Part I

samantha — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 14:56:00 -0600

A strange thing is happening to me. Really.

As I've been coding regularly now for several months, I'm starting to notice something: I'm getting opinions. That's right, I'm a baby-programmer with opinions.

So far I have an opinion on one aspect of coding. Well, I have more, but I'm only going to put one out there. And that is...

Please, please, please - put comments in your code. Please. If someone is going to read your code later on, which may happen, please put comments in there. While I agree that good code should document itself, there is no reason not to put comments in there. Should a baby-programmer like myself come along at some point and need to work on the code you've written, it would be very helpful to find some comments. Granted, I know the satisfaction that comes from hours upon frustrating hours of going through uncommented code, only to finally connect the dots and see wtf is going on in there. BUT, c'mon... Is it that hard to hit the # key and write a few words?

I've read through Rails' ActiveRecord documentation. TONS OF FRIGGIN' COMMENTS. I LOVE it. Seriously. I enjoyed reading the code and its accompanying documentation. It inspired me. It gave me ideas on how to do things differently. I experimented in irb/Rails Console with new things and ya know what happened? I learned. And it was good.

So, please, for this baby-programmer and any others who may follow me - put some commentation in thy code. Really.

"A Baby-Programmer's Opinions on Coding - Part I" by Samantha

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:43:01 -0600

Joe, thanks for the $0.02! I always appreciate the comments! I realized today as I was writing some code, that I don't always comment mine, either. I'm trying to get better, though (especially when writing in Ruby) because with things like RDoc, it's easy enough to write some comments that can serve the purpose of documentation. And yes, I'm looking forward to having more and more opinions on programming! Again, thanks for the comment and it's good to see another blog (your url) with a ____geek.org moniker! :) -Samantha

"A Baby-Programmer's Opinions on Coding - Part I" by Joe F.

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:47:41 -0600

Thought I'd add my own opinion; just remember it's only worth what you pay for it! :) I tend NOT to comment my code, unless I'm doing something really weird that warrants explanation. The consensus among many developers I've talked to is that your code should be self-commenting. You should always code in a way that someone could read it and follow it without comments. If you absolutely must write some sloppy, non-explanatory code, then yes, by all means comment it. That said, if I'm writing code for my blog, then I may comment more often in order to explain to those who may not know the language. Just thought I'd give my $0.02! The further you get in programming, the more opinions you have, and the more you love to express them!