我有一个同事,他坚持认为他的代码不需要注释,这是“自文档”。

我已经审阅了他的代码,虽然它比我看到的其他人编写的代码更清晰,但我仍然不同意自文档化代码与经过注释和文档化的代码一样完整和有用。

帮我理解一下他的观点。

什么是自文档代码 它真的能取代注释良好和文档化的代码吗 在某些情况下,它是否比有良好文档和注释的代码更好 是否存在代码不可能在没有注释的情况下自文档化的例子

也许这只是我自身的局限性,但我看不出这怎么能成为一种好的练习。

这并不是一个争论——请不要提出为什么注释良好并有文档记录的代码是高优先级的原因——有很多资源都表明了这一点,但它们对我的同行来说并没有说服力。我认为我需要更全面地了解他的观点,才能说服他。如果你有必要,可以提出一个新的问题,但不要在这里争论。

另外,那些反对自我记录代码的人——这主要是为了帮助我理解自我记录代码传播者的观点(即积极的方面)。


当前回答

自文档代码通常使用与代码所做的事情完全匹配的变量名,这样就很容易理解发生了什么

然而,这样的“自文档代码”永远不会取代注释。有时代码太复杂,自文档化代码是不够的,特别是在可维护性方面。

I once had a professor who was a firm believer in this theory In fact the best thing I ever remember him saying is "Comments are for sissies" It took all of us by surprise at first but it makes sense. However, the situation is that even though you may be able to understand what is going on in the code but someone who is less experienced that you may come behind you and not understand what is going on. This is when comments become important. I know many times that we do not believe they are important but there are very few cases where comments are unnecessary.

其他回答

我忘了我从哪学来的,但是:

程序中的每一条评论都像是对读者的道歉。“很抱歉,我的代码太晦涩了,你看了都看不懂。”我们只需要接受我们并不完美,但要努力做到完美,在需要的时候道歉。

来自非评论阵营的一些观点。

“注释良好”(冗长)的代码更难阅读和理解。首先,有更多的文本需要扫描。它增加了理解CodeBase的认知努力——非功能性文本占用了屏幕上可以用来显示代码的空间。

注释的另一个大问题是它们不可靠——尤其是在旧的代码库中,注释腐烂比位腐烂发生得更快。

当然,还有写评论的工作。除了偶尔的一行注释之外,每次我开始注释代码时,都会有两种负罪感

这个信息需要在整个支持文档中 我需要清理我的代码

Self documenting code is code that is trivially easy to understand. Variable naming goes a long way to making code self documenting, but i find the best tactic is to break any complicated logic down into tiny little chunks and refactor that information into seperate methods with verbose and informative names. Then your complicated methods become simply a list of steps to be performed. The tiny private helper methods then are documented sufficiently by their own method name and the complicated methods are documented as a sequence of abstract steps to be performed. In practice this strategy cannot always be applied perfectly so comments are still very useful. Plus you should never completely abandon any tool which will help you write code that is easier to understand.

自文档代码是非常清晰的代码,以至于不需要注释。我举个小例子:

//iterate from 0 to 100
for(int i=0; i < 100; i++) {
   println i
}

注释没什么用,因为代码很清楚。文档是一个很好的实践,但是额外的文档会给代码增加不必要的干扰。你的同事需要知道的是,不是每个人都能阅读别人的代码并了解所有的细节。

int calc(int a, int b) {
   return sqrt(a*a + b*b); //pythagoras theorem
}

如果没有注释,最后一个片段将很难破译。你可以想象其他更做作的例子。

不管纯粹的自文档代码是否可以实现,有一些事情是人们应该做的:

Never have code that is "surprising". Ie. don't use silly macro's to redefine things etc. Don't misuse operator overloading, don't try to be smart on this. Split away code at the right point. Use proper abstractions. Instead of inlining a rolling buffer (a buffer with fixed length, with two pointers that gets items added at one end and removed at the other), use an abstraction with a proper name. Keep function complexity low. If it gets too long or complex, try to split it out into other other functions.

当实现特定的复杂算法时,添加描述算法的文档(或链接)。但在这种情况下,要努力去除不必要的复杂性,增加易读性,因为很容易犯错误。