jonson@unicom.UUCP (Mary D Johnson) (04/17/88)
Followup-To:American Programmer Distribution:usa Keywords:commenting documentation You haven't lived until you haven't done assembler or FORTRAN for two or three years and, because you have a proficiency in FORTRAN on your resume, are handed a stack of 35 routines that were written in 1969-72 and asked to "reverse" engineer them so that a system specification could be written so that they could be reprogrammed in Ada. Naturally, there were no comments--you remember the lines then (if you have any grey hair at all): "Comments? Comments? We don't need no stinkin' comments." This is only one of the horror stories I tell my FORTRAN students as I try to instill the need for commenting as they go in even their "toy" programs.