Re: Datasheet-flation?

On 2024-11-29 16:21, john larkin wrote:

On Thu, 28 Nov 2024 20:42:59 -0700, Don Y
<blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:
 

On 11/28/2024 6:49 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:

Do *you* "write for yourself" or "write for others"?
>
I.e., do you write assuming YOU are the Reader?  Or, that
OTHERS will be the Reader?
>
[There seems to be a split on how developers write; I think
this would affect their choice of (spoken) languages as well.]

>
Ah. If I write a script I tend to mix English and Spanish. I tend to use
English thinking of sharing the script or asking questions about it. The places
where I do that are English speaking mostly.

>
I always write for others -- as, if I have to revisit the code
a year or five hence, *I* will effectively BE one of those
"others".

 Some guy wrote a c program that strips comments from c programs. His
reasoning is that the code speaks for itself, and the comments are
always wrong.

Ridiculous.

 I assume that program was not commented.
  I saw a bit of actual Windows source code, and it had a mandatory,
standard comment section at the start of any block of code. It said
 */
Author:    Jim Smith
Date:         2018
Purpose:  what it says
/*

My first job was as programmer for small company. They had tasked an external programmer with creating a software for them with LabWindows. This thing creates displays; think a virtual oscilloscope display, for instance, measuring things like temperature, pressure, rpm, etc. My boss says "I want you to add a voltage display". Simple.
Well, the original programmer had removed the header file that assigned labels to both the display windows and the code. The code would say "display_crt(31, A1)", where 31 was the element in the display to display rpm, for instance. If I inserted "voltage" in the display window, all the numbers shifted by one, so that 31 became pressure, for instance.
The programmer had sabotaged the code so that no one could touch it by replacing labels with their values.
It took me months to recreate the header file with labels. My boss thought I was useless: it is difficult to explain this to a non programmer.
I carefully documented since then every program I wrote. I did not want any other person to suffer what I did.
--
Cheers, Carlos.