Adam Howard codeincontext

The researcher believes that well written code should be self-documenting. Ruby code can be so similar to pseudo-code that descriptive commenting would only paraphrase the contents of the line, and could in fact make code less clear.

Below are some code samples from the project to demonstrate the self-descriptive nature of code.

validates_presence_of :password, :on => :create

This line tells the current model that it should validate the presence of a password when it is created.

This is a snippet from sessions_controller.rb, first uncommented, and then with 'descriptive' comments:

	<!DOCTYPE html>
	<html>
	<head>
	<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.min.js"></script>
	</head>
	<body>
	<h1>canvas</h1>

	<canvas width="400" height="400" id="canvasElement"></canvas>

	require 'rubygems'
	require 'twitter'
	require 'active_support/core_ext'

	timeline = Twitter.user_timeline("skattyadz", count: 200, include_rts: true)
	puts timeline.select{\|t\| t.created_at > 1.day.ago}.count

	require 'daemons'
	require 'tweetstream'

	$output_file = '???/deleted_tweets.txt'

	Daemons.run_proc(
	'deletweet',
	log_output: true,
	dir_mode: :script
	) do

	<!DOCTYPE html>
	<html>
	<head>
	<title>How Old Was That?</title>
	<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.min.js"></script>

	<script type="text/javascript">
	var username = "";

	$.xhrPool = [];

	<!DOCTYPE html>
	<html>
	<head>
	<title>Gamepad Shit</title>

	<script type="text/javascript"></script>
	<style type="text/css"></style>
	</head>
	<body>
	<h1>Gamepad Shit</h1>

	require 'twitter'

	Twitter.configure do \|config\|
	config.consumer_key = 'xxx'
	config.consumer_secret = 'xxx'
	config.oauth_token = 'xxx'
	config.oauth_token_secret = 'xxx'
	end

	threads = []

	// Constants
	Solar = {
	START_HEALTH: 100,
	RADIUS: 10,
	COLOR: "FF0",
	RECYCLE: 50,
	RANGE: 50,
	ENERGY_PRODUCED: 0.5,
	STORAGE: 25,
	COST: 200,

	Handlebars.Utils.isEmpty = function(value) {
	if (typeof value === "undefined") {
	return true;
	} else if (value === null) {
	return true;
	} else if (value === false) {
	return true;
	} else if (value === '') {
	return true;
	} else if (value === 'null') {

	require 'timeout'

	files_to_watch = %w{FYP.txt template.tex FYP.bib}

	guard :shell do
	files_regex = Regexp.new(files_to_watch.join("\|"))
	watch(files_regex) { regenerate }
	end

	def regenerate