I recently hired into a data analytics team for a hospital, and we don’t have a style guide. Lots of frustration from folks working with legacy code…I thought putting together a style guide would help folks working with code they didn’t write, starting with requiring a header for SQL scripts first as low hanging fruit.
Or so I thought.
My counterpart over application development says that we shouldnt be documenting any metadata in-line, and he’d rather implement “docfx” if we want to improve code metadata and documentation. I’m terrified of half-implementing yet another application to further muddy the waters–i’m concerned it will become just one-more place to look while troubleshooting something.
Am I going crazy? I thought code headers were an industry standard, and in-line comments are regarded as practically necessary when working with a larger team…
@wethegreenpeople @alokir It is definitely a balance. Programmers love to preach DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself), and then always seem to go and write a comment explaining what their last line of code does. Understanding comes from ‘why’ and ‘how’, not one or other. Context is very important. That being said, so long as collapsible comments are a thing in most text editors, Im fine with someone being verbose. Programming can be as stylistic as it can be technical.