Richard Newman <richard@cdres.com> writes: <snip XP philosophy>
IMHO, proper detailed documentation is simply readable code.
This is part of the reason I have such a hard time with XP. The first problem is that the author of a piece of code almost invariably overestimates its readability. It's common that even the original author can't understand what he was doing after 6 months go by. The second problem is that you can't determine the correctness of code by looking at it without a specification. The redundancy provided by documentation is important.
At some degree, having the code clearly reflect the algorithms involved, such that a layperson can assess what product does, allows these translation layers to be reduced.
You're seriously suggesting that the layperson can read the code and assess what the product does?
Finally, please note that I would not advocate writing code such that C++ operators and the like are rewritten into pseudo-English (or whichever).
For instance, the tertiary operation
ternary [ie. "?:"] operator? -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com