Archive for the The Art of Category

Debugging is twice as hard as writing code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. - Brian Kernighan

If you’ve been programming for any length of time I’m sure at one time you’ve had the pleasure (or lack thereof) of wading through another persons code. It is definitely not a pleasurable journey when the code is new, written with the newest standards; but when the code is legacy it can be a downright hair-pulling experience.
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No matter what other people say, commenting source code is an art form. It takes finesse (and sometimes an English degree :P) to properly comment your code. Some people are under the mindset “if its code, it has to be commented with long detailed comments” while others take the total opposite and barely comment a single line, and when they do they just explain the obvious. Which mindset is best? Neither!
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