Direction of KDevelop4

[Andrew Sutton]

> As I've said, I only want useless comments thrown out.  I specifically
> exempted from my wish list those that document subtle problems.

normally, i wouldn't bother contributing my $.02 to the discussion  
because i'm not a kdevelop developer, but i thought i might weigh in  
on this topic because commenting style comes up alot in my lab (we  
all teach or have taught programming). the only useless comments are  
those that are inconsistent with what the code actually does.  
otherwise, comments, among other things, serve to document  
information that just can't be written down in the syntax of the  
language (e.g., rationale). for me they often serve as reminders for  
what i'm doing and why. so while i may have written functions that  
are over 60% comment, but you know what? anybody who looks at it can  
tell exactly what they do and why they do it that way.

anyway, there are two points to make. first, standardizing commenting  
style (how much and where) is a complete waste of time. second,  
_removing_ comments is just asinine. if you didn't write the code  
originally, how do you know what comments are useful to its writer. i  
would actually be supremely pissed if somebody went ahead and deleted  
comments out of my code. it's just plain rude.

that said, i try to teach my students to comment so i can look at a  
piece of code they write and understand the logic of what they're  
trying to do. it helps me figure out why they're might be trying to  
write a program one way as opposed to another, or if there are any  
obvious flaws in the logic. but that's how i roll.

andrew sutton
asutton at cs.kent.edu