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| Authored by: jesse on Saturday, April 28 2012 @ 04:25 AM EDT |
The first time I ever saw the technique was back in the early 1970s time frame
when I was learning to program.
My task was to understand applications for a DEC PDP-10/DecSystem 10. The
documentation was delimited by ";+" at the start, and ";-"
to end the block.
Anything within that block was taken by the formatting program
"runoff", which would then format and provide printer ready logic
documentation for the application.
This was also when I found out that programmers don't update documentation when
they update the code...
A significant amount of the "documentation" was nearly useless as it
talked about the past design, but not the current design.
The only thing remaining useful (when they included it) was the function calls
they documented. IF the programmers remembered to include the delimiters around
the function. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: jjs on Saturday, April 28 2012 @ 07:55 AM EDT |
Another reason against Software patents - we keep reinventing
the same ideas. Each generation thinks they're the first to
think of <X>
Also a good reason to keep the grey-beards around - because
we don't document out history (unlike real engineering).
---
(Note IANAL, I don't play one on TV, etc, consult a practicing attorney, etc,
etc)
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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