[swift-evolution] [Proposal] Replace all Swift comments by end notes.

[Tony Allevato]

As a general rule of thumb, changes to the language should not require the
use of an IDE in order to return them back to the level of usability that
was had before the change. Swift is not a Mac/Xcode-only language, and even
on that platform, there are a number of times where I personally find
myself working in Sublime Text instead of Xcode, for various reasons.

Regarding this idea specifically, I think it would simply discourage users
from writing comments at all, without necessarily any improvement in code
quality. The developers who already write self-explanatory code will
continue to do so, and those who write bad code and don't comment will also
continue to do so. Do you have any evidence that making commenting harder
would improve code quality?

On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 7:28 AM Amir Michail via swift-evolution <
swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:

> Why not replace all Swift comments by end notes at the end of each source
> file so as to minimize the impact of misleading/outdated comments on code
> comprehension?
>
> You don’t necessarily need to scroll to the end of the source file to read
> a referenced end note in the code since the IDE could show a popup whenever
> the mouse pointer lingers over an end note reference (e.g., a number/label).
>
> Maybe this would encourage programmers to write more self-explanatory code
> while keeping (end note) comments to a minimum?
> _______________________________________________
> swift-evolution mailing list
> swift-evolution at swift.org
> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/attachments/20170116/59262d32/attachment.html>