You're not "the only person who understands code", you're the person who refuses to write good documentation based on a misplaced sense of superiority.
Have you read the original article? It was a minor correction to a typo in some documentation. I'm pretty sure everyone who knows how to read English would have understood the diff without reading any comments. The amusing comment was no big deal in this case, IMO.
Situations differ. Absolute rules for all circumstances are far more of a cancer than a little levity.
You've seen my pull requests then? When I write code for work or anyone but me I make sure it's well done. Just because I don't like it doesn't mean I don't do it.
So quit with the negative bullshit attitude and realize that you haven't a clue about what you're saying.
Also note it isn't superior nothing. I'm just genuinely baffled that people are so hesitant about looking at code for a solution. No mater how good the dox I don't understand til I've read the code. Also note how in my linked example residing the docs was way less useful than just looking at the code. Not because the marionette ppl are the evil dancer you whine about but because they are ppl and sometimes things slip
> I'm just genuinely baffled that people are so hesitant about looking at code for a solution. No mater how good the dox I don't understand til I've read the code.
Let me help.
The code you look at to find the solution might be one 20 or 30 line chunk of Ruby that performs a service for a chunk of 10 year old VB or 20 year old Perl or 30 year old C, or some chain of several languages. A support guy, or apps-level documenter, or maintenance programmer adding a feature, or architect integrating with another system, or business integration consultant helping to decide where the business needs to invest, or some other decision maker really, really doesn't have time to read through 40,000 lines of code in several languages to find out how a feature works.
For example: one of my first jobs was with an established big brand with many years of legacy data and organic "enterprise" systems, integrating data produced by an AS400 green-screen application into VB (on a Windows box) by copying (via FTP on a SCO box) a fixed-width text file produced by a shell script on the AS400, and parsing it so we could put it into Oracle for processing by a C++ application with API hooks into a Nortel Meridian coms system. When an outbound call goes to the wrong number, where's the bug?
Even if I'm reading _my own_ code 6 or 36 months later, I'm much happier if I've logged the checkins correctly so that it narrows it down to which dozen or so of many thousands of commits touched a feature. Whenever I've had to track down someone else's bug, or tried to justify the technical justification for some business decision the system makes, or tried to write high level progress documentation (think changelog for senior managers), the commit messages make the difference between it taking two weeks and taking two years (i.e. never happening).
It's easy to think, in the post-codial glow when you're fresh from the zone, that there's no way this code isn't absolutely obvious. I've been that guy. I've also been the guy that cursed that guy for making it hard to find the needle in the haystack. I've even been both guys separated by 18 months. Commit messages can make the difference between getting it done in 20 minutes, and "looking at code for a solution" for two days.
You're not "the only person who understands code", you're the person who refuses to write good documentation based on a misplaced sense of superiority.
Get over yourself.