Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!njin!princeton!phoenix!pucc!EGNILGES
From: EGNILGES@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: comments on comments
Message-ID: <7287@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 22 Feb 89 16:58:26 GMT
References: <1813@goofy.megatest.UUCP> <20233@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <4173bd76.183dc@apollo.COM> <9606@ihlpb.ATT.COM> <419ca3bc.183dc@apollo.COM>
Reply-To: EGNILGES@pucc.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 32
Disclaimer: Author bears full responsibility for contents of this article

In article <419ca3bc.183dc@apollo.COM>, perry@apollo.COM (Jim Perry) writes:

>
>(examples of how Joe Programmer sleazes his way out of writing comments).
>
>This attitude is one of the best arguments I've seen for distinguishing
>Software Engineering from Programming.  Jane Engineer writes comments not
>because someone is requiring her to, but because she knows that this
>code is going to be around for a long time, and that the initial writing
>is a tiny fraction of its lifetime.

     While I am in favor of highly literate, complete, and well-
     written comments, this posting places the blame for undercommented
     software on individual shoulders.  Far more important is the
     attitude of management.  In some situations, heavy use of
     "design methodologies" prior to coding have left little time
     for programmers to do other than crank out uncommented code.
     In others, management pressure for visible results selects out
     those programmers who neglect comments.

     Also, whether one is a programmer versus a software engineer is
     not a matter of personal virtue.  Traditional engineers were
     backed-up by legal, educational, and certification requirements,
     none of which apply to our field.  It is dangerous to allow
     management alone to define who is an engineer.  Finally, I'd
     appreciate talking to a good programmer over a person who
     (in the absence of legal/educational/certification requirements)
     pretends to be a "software engineer".

Edward Nilges

ALLE MENSCHEN WERDEN BRUDER - Schiller