Loads of Bug Fixes Today – Slugging it Out
Today was another really slow day. There were a few bug reports I was able to ditch this morning, but the rest of the day was slugging through problems that really did need to be addressed. One of the "bugs" from this morning was turned into a feature request, and that was an interesting exercise in frustration.
I've had the talk with a lot of the Rubists that comments are non-optional, but I've gotten quite a bit of push-back from even those that I didn't expect it from. I waited, because I knew a day like today would come.
I was working on a feature, looking at a particularly obtuse piece of Ruby code, and trying to figure out what the author was doing. One of the long-time Ruby devs stopped by to lend a hand, and even to him, this was bad code. Far too "tricky" - just for the sake of being "tricky". Far too compact. No readability - and of course, no comments.
The long-time Ruby dev even said "I hate it when he does this".
I could not have had a better opening for the importance of comments. And he totally agreed.
'Nuff said.
Slugging through this bug was worth it.