Do You Document?

ok, on monday i started working for a company and one of my jobs is to look at their existing database (written in filemaker 5.5) and learn how it works enough to modify it and fix bits that don't work.

The probelm...the people that wrote it didn't DOCUMENT IT !!! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh

so it is driving me insane !!

So..do you document your code?

I once read a programmers comment, he/she said in their code:
'Real programmers dont comment, if it was hard to write then it should be hard to understand!'

You gotta love it! Personally I do comment, although when I go back and look at old code it still takes some time to figure it out never mind the endless lines of comment that go with it.

hehe, yeah i have heard that before! If i meat the guy i will tell him it is funny and the kill him !!!!!!! {just kidding...}

LOL, poor you RF, not a job I envy, cleaning up someone else's mess.

tell me about it!! We don't even have the developer edition of the software for me to use to step through the code !!!

Ouch!! That could be fun... or not.

Most of the systems I work on haven't been documented. And like
everyone who has worked on them in the past, I don't get the time
to document them

this system to me just seems a mess. But maybe that also has something to do with not knowing the software and not liking it either !!!

I have never had a project approved when I have included the cost of documentation, and I don't just mean putting comments in code. What money gets saved by omitting documentation gets eaten up later when we have to modify complicated workflows, restructure a database or recouple related functions. I have to chuckle because I know what you're talking about and the pennies people save now cost them mucho dollars later, but they never ever see it that way.

honestly, comments usually won't really help. it's not like you'll read the comments and
all of a sudden understand what you need to do - after all that's "foreign logic" in there.
so I don't comment very much, and even if I did it wouldn't help much to those who'll
need to modify or understand my code.
I'm not saying it's good, it's much better to put comments but usually it's just not
realistic.

True but commenting on functions especially is very helpful for legacy systems.
Function inputs and return types and a little summary of what they do is about the only thing I comment.
It's like shadow mentioned, sometimes it won't help any one who may not be in the same page as you are.

Yes.