[webkit-dev] Comments in the code (Was Please include function-level comments in change log entries)

[Per Bothner]

On 07/11/2012 09:30 AM, Yaar Schnitman wrote:
> [(dev time of maintaining comments) + (risk of outdated comments causing
> bugs X dev time of fixing resulting bugs)] << (dev time gained by more
> contributors each being more knowledgable)
>
> No?

Perhaps:

[(dev time of maintaining comments)
  + (risk of outdated comments causing  bugs * dev time of fixing 
resulting bugs)]
<<
[(dev time gained by more contributors each being more knowledgable)
  + (reduced time from contributors trying to figure out the code)
  + (risk of misunderstandings causing bugs that could be avoided by 
better comments
     * dev time of fixing resulting bugs)]

(Though perhaps the 2 clauses I added could be viewed as variants
by the original one.)

On 07/11/2012 09:51 AM, Ryosuke Niwa wrote:> On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 
9:30 AM, Yaar Schnitman <yaar at chromium.org
> How did you reach such a conclusion? Do you have any data points to
> support that?

It seems plausible.  I doubt we have any data points to support the
opposite conclusion.  Given that, I would suggest it is better for an
open-source project to err on the side of more public information
(i.e. openness) rather than less.
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per.bothner at oracle.com   per at bothner.com   http://per.bothner.com/