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I wonder if Apple actually lives up to the idea of documenting its code well. Every programmer I've ever known said he couldn't care less about documentation of the code, whether in the code or out. I asked one what kind of documentation he would want, if he got a new job where he had to maintain and modify code that he'd never seen before. He answered none; that if he needed to know something about how the code worked, he'd open the code and read it, and he was good enough that he could figure it out for himself. His attitude seemed to be pretty much common among all the code people I've worked with over the years. That makes me wonder if Apple really pays attention to providing good code comments.
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From: Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>
To: phil stokes <philstokes03 -at- googlemail -dot- com>
Cc: TECHWR-L Writing <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Friday, March 29, 2013 10:24 AM
Subject: Re: An interview question
That's talking about the documentation of the code itself, which mostly
means the code needs to be well commented.
On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 7:47 AM, phil stokes <philstokes03 -at- googlemail -dot- com>wrote:
> Hmm, interesting point. In one of those moments of synchronicity, I just
> happened to read an Apple doc this afternoon that ironically stated, among
> other things, that:
>
> A principal goal of object-oriented programming is to make the code you
> write as reusable as possibleâ.Reusability is influenced by factors such as
> these:
>
> <snip>
> ***How clear the documentation is***
>
> <snip>
>
> I say "ironically" as Apple docs are about as frustrating as any docs I've
> ever read. With the exception of comprehensiveness, in any other terms,
> their work falls so far below professional standards of good technical
> writing it beggars belief.
>
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