RE: Code comments as documentation?

Subject: RE: Code comments as documentation?
From: Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 14:29:11 -0700


Quoting France Baril <France -dot- Baril -at- ixiasoft -dot- com>:

> Geoff, I do this (using code comments for documentation) and it works
> great. I add an introduction, information about the purpose of the
> different modules, why you should use them, how they can be used to
> produce x and y and then just provide the API descriptions extracted
> from the code.

The usefulness of code comments as documentation depends largely on how they are
written. I've worked at places where the comments were useless for
documentation. At others (typically, open source companies, or companies where
lead developers have been active in open source), the comments are detailed
enough that they amount to a tutorial. The practice is only as good - or as bad
- as the comments themselves.

--
Bruce Byfield

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RE: Code comments as documentation?: From: France Baril

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