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Even outdated comments I still find useful in that they tell me how things used to work, and why they used to work that way. Which is important context for fig
by randyrand 4y ago
Even outdated comments I still find useful in that they tell me how things used to work, and why they used to work that way.
Which is important context for figuring out how it works now.
- euroderf 4y agoIt is important tho to note that wrong documentation is significantly worse than no documentation.
- randyrand 4y agoI have not found that to be the case. usually it’s easy to tell when documentation is outdated, and then i just use it as reference to figure out how it works now.
- euroderf 4y agoMaybe not so easy. I would say every documentation page needs a "Last Modified" date. Similarly, in a production environment, I found that when there was no time to keep the docs up to date with the latest changes, I marked them on the cover page as PRELIMINARY just to put readers on alert. And so, similarly, should a document not getting the attention it needs be marked as NOT WELL MAINTAINED ? I get the feeling this idea would not fly. Not in a commercial environment anyways.
- clumpthump 4y agoI disagree with that. Sure, wrong documentation can mislead and confuse, but it can also be very helpful. Lying comments have often helped me because it's often useful to know that a particular person at a particular point in time believed something to be true, even if it isn't true any more and even if it were never true. In a pile of spaghetti code, a good lying comment can point to the needle in the haystack where the root cause of a bug is hiding.