[Squeakfoundation]The Harvesting process and the BFAV

[Andreas Raab]

Hi Göran,

> > Err ... actually this is wrong. Really, we never intended 
> > to "write comments later".
> 
> True. You probably didn't think like I wrote it. I take that back!
> And you probably had your reasons - you didn't intend to go open 
> source etc, it was your own "box" and it was of course all up to
> you how you worked etc. I didn't imply any blame. :-)

I didn't read any in your message ;-) I just wanted to point out that your
logical conclusions have a wrong premise. And as you all know logic teaches
us that starting from a wrong premise we can come to any conclusion we want
;-)

> But nevertheless the net effect is the same unfortunately - 
> and I don't think we should go on doing the same mistake.

That's (where I think) you are wrong. At least if by "doing the same
mistake" you mean to "intend to write comments later". We never intended
that.

> If anyone disagrees with this I am all ears, please tell me
> why it would be good to insert uncommented code into Squeak.

It isn't good - in my understanding it is simply unavoidable in various
areas if you have an incrementally developing system. Personally, I have
found that if I "write comments first" they almost always end up wrong as at
this time I can't cover the workings of a certain class in detail yet. So it
is very likely that I decide to do some things differently somewhere down
the line and then the (early) comment ends up wrongly. If I want _accurate_
comments I always write them after the fact.

Incidentally, this is one of the major differences I see with respect to
comments vs. tests. Tests are kept pretty much "automatically in sync" with
the actual code so (for example) as far as boundary conditions go tests
document the code much better than any comment could. This is not true for
overall design issues (at which tests are horrible) but for many situations
a test can be (at least) as helpful as a comment.

Cheers,
 - Andreas