[Novalug] documentation

[Chris Flipse]

On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 06:32:12PM -0400, Ed James wrote:
> I agree, with a small twist.  Long ago, I started doing the
> comments first, to make sure I understood what I wanted to
> do, and to make sure the logic was sound.  This was particularly
> handy when I was new to a given language.  After that, the code
> pretty much just fell into place.  Development was thusly made
> easier.
>
> On the maintenance side, having accurate comments really make
> doing enchancements a lot easier, rather than flicking back and
> forth between code and manuals.

And the modern iteration of doing this is called Test Driven Development
-- instead of comments, you write tests first, then the code to make
them pass.

Done right, it's a really effective form of executable documentation
laying out the intentions of the application.
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