Creating documentation
Having been a computer science instructor for 31 years, I can tell you that the one task most students put off for as long as possible is documenting their code. I have learned of companies that forbid their developers to comment in their code. These companies believe that code should be self-documenting. If you cannot understand the purpose of the code from how it is written, then it has been written poorly. This is a big mistake. Students doing internships at such companies report spending an inordinate amount of time trying to understand the company’s code base.
Documenting or commenting in code is not about explaining or apologizing for writing bad code. Code carries out tasks and the task should be obvious from the code itself. What is never obvious is why the code has been constructed in a certain way and how it may fit in with the rest of the program. One question to ask yourself is whether the programmer who takes over this code base when you...
