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Re: "Documentation by paper"
- From: kenner at vlsi1 dot ultra dot nyu dot edu (Richard Kenner)
- To: asutton at cs dot kent dot edu
- Cc: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Date: Sun, 1 Feb 04 07:20:18 EST
- Subject: Re: "Documentation by paper"
maybe it's me, but it seems a bit odd that people would argue against
documentation extraction in favor of having developers look at the
implementation as a reference. but then again, i'm only a software
engin... i mean grad student.
I haven't heard anybody make that argument. The issue is that of
"extraction". A lot of us fail to see that "extracting" documentation
is useful and if the method of generating it involves anotations that
make the source harder to read and write, it's a net negative.
As Robert points out, if you generate a separate file for documentation,
it's easy to have old versions of that file around without knowing it.
If all the documentation (both specification and implementation) is in
the same place as the source, you don't have that risk.