Re: Not a bible thumper. . .

Darrin R. Smith (drsmith@eznet.net)
Fri, 19 Jul 1996 22:36:15 -0400

Herbert Wengatz wrote:
>
>
> If someone really hunts a nasty bug for ??? Days/Weeks, I can understand such comments
> *VERY* good. (I just hung for three days in very important project whose end-date
> is very soon...)
> As long as the most are comments, we can keep them. Any programmer (only those
> will read the sources!) will understand the feelings the author has had and as well
> will regard this as an explicit warning not to F*CK around with that special code.
>
> Linux is not a "streamlined", high-tech, noble, elite, "pay-too-much-for" product,
> like any M$-software. It's rough and crude, since it's written by many developers
> from all over the world. You can't expect that they all use a "plain nice high-school-
> english". So you can't expect the Linux-sources to be a correct reading for a six year old
> girl. Leave the comments in, they are for those who need them and kick out only
> the dirty part, which may reach the day-by-day-simple-end-user.
>
> On the other hand, I assume, you'd find some of these expressions in the M$-Sources, too.
> :-)
>
> Regards,
>
> Herbert

I've been reading this thread for a while now, and I have to
vote for leaving all comments that do not reach the end user as they
are. Changing them would be a bad idea as they help to express the
personal feelings of the developer to the reader. I don't see how they
could be changed without changing the basic intention of the comment(and
I have read the suggestions posted here, too).
As an interesting side note, I work for a large corp. here, and
I have seen a fair amount of the code written by the developers.
Using vulgarity for expression in source code is _very_ common since
no one will see it but the developers and their bosses.

--Darrin

> _____________________________________________________________________
> Herbert Wengatz, 81375 Munich |Disclaim: This Mail is my own opinion,
> Office :hwe@uebemc.siemens.de |not that of my company.
> Private:hwe@rtfact.muc.de | http://www.muc.de/~hwe/rtfact
> "Excellence is a moving target."

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