[ale] CLI conversion of word DOCs to PDF

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

Mike Harrison <cluon at geeklabs.com> wrote:

>On Mon, 7 May 2012, Jim Kinney wrote:
>
>> On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 9:38 PM, Stephen Haywood <
>> stephen at averagesecurityguy.info> wrote:
>>
>>>>
>>>> Programmers suck at documentation.
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>
>>> Some of us don't :)
>
>Ok, there are exceptions, and that was a generalization.
>Specifically: I suck at documentation, the programmers
>that work for me, with rare exceptions, also suck at documentation. 
>I have yet, in my life, never worked with a programmer that was good at
>
>documentation of their code.
>

Back in the 90's, I was programming for Delta Air Lines in Clipper.  I was very good at documenting my code, as I was taught to do at DeVry when I was in school.  Almost all functions were modular black box type of things.  Every one had a comment header block, which described in detail what the function did, what it's inputs and parameters were, the revision history, and how to use it.  Within the code, I would use single line and inline comments to explain what almost every small set of statements did.  You could, literally, read my code like a book, even if you'd never seen it before.  That probably made it too easy to replace me later, but that's a different story.  It was sure helpful months later when I came back and had to modify something and had to recreate the train of thought in my mind to remember what I did before.

I do believe that almost all programmers either can't, or won't, or perhaps most of all, are not given the time and encouragement to properly document their code.  It is hard time consuming work, after all.  I suspect most could a very nice job of it if they were given the right environment to do so by management.

Sincerely,

Ron

>> You're weird!
>
>I am on the far edges of many bell curves, proudly. :)
>
>


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Ron Frazier
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linuxdude AT techstarship.com