How Usefull Is Undocumented Sourcecode?

[christo930]

I am not a programmer so I don't really know, but it seems to me, that if you removed all of the comments and documentation from the sourcecode, that figuring out how a piece of software works would take much longer without all of the programer comments. I ask because I am wondering if the mamegp programmer could strip all of his comments out of the source code, it would still be compilable source code, but could buy him the 2 months time he needs. But probably not since he needs to prove beyond a doubt that it is his.


Chris

 

[damaki]

An undocumented project is totally useless. You got the point.
The only solution would be to reverse engineer the code to point out what it does, but writing code from scratch is faster.

I think he must document his project, not only his code. Comments are not enough. These are not the only way to document code, they are only a tiny part of a real program documentation. As it is an university's project, he surely has many papers to write.
Still I cannot understand why he cannot give out his current code. The comments, stripped or not, should not be the problem. He surely rathers give a ready to edit project than an uncommented, undocumented, useless project. But nothing could really prevent him from distributing it.

 

[Digitalrat]

Still I cannot understand why he cannot give out his current code.

He would have no proves that he coded it himself if he has given out the code.

 

[Rico]

The only time undocumented code is acceptable is if it was wrapped in an API that IS documented. And even then the underlying code couldn't be easily modified. Comment your code if you plan on understanding it more than two weeks later.

 

[Hwrd]

Undocumented source code is definitely better than working from scratch.

Documented comments in source code will be ignored by the compiler/assembler, so they will not bloat the executable nor slow it down.

Franxis has his reasons for not releasing the source (of which the fact that it is an incompleted university project is a big one; would you release a half completedc term paper?)

Be patient and THANKFUL for what he's done already! <_<

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

It seems Mr. Belmont, aka God for his friends and family (and specially himself), isn't too happy with the idea that Franxis ported MAME to the GP32, as he even said it was a "rather lame university project"... Maybe he could be annoyed that he didn't release the code, thus breaking the rules of the licence, but it was a really unnecessary comment.