[Tutor] OT: best comments in source code

[Steven D'Aprano]

On 07/12/12 19:02, Albert-Jan Roskam wrote:
>
>
> Somebody on another mailing list posted this and I thought I'd share this with you -- Merry Christmas!
>
>
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/184618/what-is-the-best-comment-in-source-code-you-have-ever-encountered?page=1&tab=votes#tab-top
>
>
> //
> // Dear maintainer:
> //
> // Once you are done trying to 'optimize' this routine,
> // and have realized what a terrible mistake that was,
> // please increment the following counter as a warning
> // to the next guy:
> //
> // total_hours_wasted_here = 42
> //



+1 QOTW!


So true. Unfortunately, many programers follow the strategy "optimize
by blind faith" -- they write code which they think will be fast, without
ever measuring whether or not it is fast.

That's because optimization is hard. But imagining you have optimized
is easy.



-- 
Steven