RE: The Harvesting process and the BFAV

Hi G=F6ran,

> > Err ... actually this is wrong. Really, we never intended=20
> > to "write comments later".
>=20
> True. You probably didn't think like I wrote it. I take that back!
> And you probably had your reasons - you didn't intend to go open=20
> source etc, it was your own "box" and it was of course all up to
> you how you worked etc. I didn't imply any blame. :-)

I didn't read any in your message ;-) I just wanted to point out that =
your
logical conclusions have a wrong premise. And as you all know logic =
teaches
us that starting from a wrong premise we can come to any conclusion we =
want
;-)

> But nevertheless the net effect is the same unfortunately -=20
> and I don't think we should go on doing the same mistake.

That's (where I think) you are wrong. At least if by "doing the same
mistake" you mean to "intend to write comments later". We never intended
that.

> If anyone disagrees with this I am all ears, please tell me
> why it would be good to insert uncommented code into Squeak.

It isn't good - in my understanding it is simply unavoidable in various
areas if you have an incrementally developing system. Personally, I have
found that if I "write comments first" they almost always end up wrong =
as at
this time I can't cover the workings of a certain class in detail yet. =
So it
is very likely that I decide to do some things differently somewhere =
down
the line and then the (early) comment ends up wrongly. If I want =
_accurate_
comments I always write them after the fact.

Incidentally, this is one of the major differences I see with respect to
comments vs. tests. Tests are kept pretty much "automatically in sync" =
with
the actual code so (for example) as far as boundary conditions go tests
document the code much better than any comment could. This is not true =
for
overall design issues (at which tests are horrible) but for many =
situations
a test can be (at least) as helpful as a comment.

Cheers,
 - Andreas