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re: Re: Re st: RE: open source


From   David Airey <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   re: Re: Re st: RE: open source
Date   Mon, 6 Sep 2004 14:38:38 -0500


As for commenting ado code, what I would like to see is code that I, as a
programmer, can sit down, read, and learn from, without having to engage
in excessive detective work. I did my formal training in programming an
embarrassing number of years ago (clue - I subsequently albeit briefly had
arpanet privileges), but I doubt the principles of documenting code have
changed an awful lot since then. I have a vague memory of Bill Gould
writing somewhere that lots of comments slow down the execution of code,
but I would hope there would be ways around this in practice.

Yes, I remember that too. I think it was the case that comments after the program did not slow it down, because nothing was interpreted after end. I think perhaps this means the run copy could be up top and the commented (documented) version down below or something like that. There are numerous texts (one good one by Microsoft) on the value of code documentation. For the in house purposes of StataCorp, their level of ado documentation must be adequate, otherwise they would be inefficiently having to figure out the code and the fix. My guess is that documentation would serve the user community more than StataCorp by improving external programming skills. But, that's why we pay for a product. Maybe the structure of the ado code should have this formalized.

-Dave

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