a little rant about sourceforge

[bigtomrodney]

I don't think that's necessarily the case. Most programmers I know don't like using someone else's code for things because they can't understand it, not because they want "credit". Programmers are notoriously bad at not commenting their code sufficiently and keeping the reasons for their coding decisions in their head.

I think we're all guilty of that - it's especially prominent with languages like C where habits can vary so much as to obfusticate completely the function. Commenting always sounds like a great idea til your actually coding, then you forget all about it.

[techieMoe]

I think we're all guilty of that - it's especially prominent with languages like C where habits can vary so much as to obfusticate completely the function. Commenting always sounds like a great idea til your actually coding, then you forget all about it.

Certainly. I'll be the first to admit that despite my best efforts, the vast majority of my code has very sparse and often cryptic comments that serve to jog my memory but would be unintelligible to another person.

Java makes it a little harder to do this since (as has been brought to my attention recently) it lacks a preprocessor, so some of the shortcuts (like cout/cin, etc) available in C/C++ that can make the code less obvious aren't available. (I don't want to get into another debate about the merits of having/not having a preprocessor, by the way. It's just an example. )

[carlosponti]

i program in powerbuilder and cant manage to comment my code either. its kind of an epidemic really.

[Cabhan]

I agree entirely. Even in class, someone will go "Alex, can you help me with this?" I'll go over, and even with him sitting right there, I will have a lot of trouble with understanding what his code is doing.

Not only do we keep a lot of reasons in our heads, but people see different ways of accomplishing the same goal. What makes perfect sense to one person may be entirely obfuscated to someone else.

And as far as comments? Woah nellie! The only time I comment my code is for class, where we have to comment method headers. But I don't comment anything else.

[carlosponti]

when i was in school i never commented code of course always got marks off for it but i figured the points were not worth the trouble lol

[stevebee]

I agree...its a little irritating to go there and find so many dead links and outdated projects.

They should add a system where people can report an outdated project.

[oz]

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