Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!lll-tis!oodis01!uplherc!utah-gr!utah-cs!defun.utah.edu!shebs From: shebs%defun.utah.edu.uucp@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs) Newsgroups: comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Control flow and common sense Message-ID: <5473@utah-cs.UUCP> Date: 7 May 88 14:14:54 GMT References: <4605@ihlpf.ATT.COM> <41445UH2@PSUVM> <1122@daisy.UUCP> Sender: news@utah-cs.UUCP Reply-To: shebs%defun.utah.edu.UUCP@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs) Organization: PASS Research Group Lines: 19 In article <1122@daisy.UUCP> david@daisy.UUCP (David Schachter) writes: >One fellow I know documented a particularly complex and obscure code with the >comment "This procudure implements thealgorithm given >on page of by ". (The angle bracketed items >are mine.) Sounds perfectly fine to me. Why waste all kinds of space repeating other people's words? Or worse, not mentioning at all that the algorithm derives from somewhere else? In all fairness, the bald citation is insufficient - there should also be one or two lines like "the algorithm is based on the use of multi-colored pointers cycling around in something resembling a butterfly FFT". This will jog the memory of the informed reader, and strongly suggest to the ignorant reader that there are a lot of prerequisites to understanding this code. stan shebs shebs@cs.utah.edu