Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Comments are more important than code (Jef Raskin) (acmqueue.org)
4 points by bootload on June 15, 2007 | hide | past | favorite | 5 comments



I think the title is a bit misleading: the essay argues that documentation is more important than code. Comments are only part of that.

The prototypical one-line comment immediately before a line of code is often superfluous---a sign of a missing function, or the need for introducing a more descriptive variable binding. In contrast, more extensive documentation comments, operating at a higher level of abstraction than the one-liners, do fill an essential role by providing motivation and context.

Whether documentation is "more important" than code is debatable, but surely many pieces of nice code suffer for lack of decent documentation.


Actually, indentation style is more important than code.


I've submitted to the fact that no code is better than code.


Mu


actually, discussing what is more important than code is more important than code




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: