Timeline for How can I ask my boss (in a polite way) to comment his code?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
22 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 4, 2015 at 15:44 | audit | First posts | |||
| Mar 5, 2015 at 14:13 | |||||
| Feb 16, 2015 at 19:18 | comment | added | radarbob | Start commenting the code yourself. Why should we treat comments like holy scripture? Who better to make comments than one who is unfamiliar - who knows where comments are needed. Besides good commenting takes practice and is harder than you'd think. Strive for a balance of needed detail and big picture. Finally, I hate realizing that I'm the nth person to re-learn a particular uncommented code bit over the years. (we have 100's of k's of uncommented LOC). Follow the Boy Scouts rule: leave your code-site better than you found it. | |
| Feb 12, 2015 at 15:47 | comment | added | MrDosu | Programming is a majority of the time feeling incompetent with short interspersed bursts of feeling of utter godlike genius. | |
| Feb 12, 2015 at 8:17 | comment | added | joojaa | @paul23 It is not actually true the reporting works any better in say Mechanical engineering what i do now after being a programmer. The reports often omit some minute detail. Programmers are often much closer to the operative end so they both need to understand what is, versus what was planned. So they often reject what was planned as a lie. Same happens in mechanical engineering but most engineers are far removed from the minute details so they need not care. They live in the luxury of believing reports are true. | |
| Feb 11, 2015 at 17:22 | comment | added | pjc50 | @paul23 The classic objection to detailed written descriptions of how the software works is that the either get out of sync with the code or are a large burden to keep updated. The more dynamic the business the less time is spent documenting, as one is writing in the sand of fluid requirements and the tide of change will just wash it away. And who reads the reports anyway? (Some sub-fields try a lot harder, and comments + commit log is the normal minimum that works quite well). | |
| Feb 11, 2015 at 16:58 | comment | added | paul23 | @pjc50 Interesting, I have no experience with jobs in the programming field, but in all other technical fields there are always progress reports etc you can read up on. Why is reporting so much shunned away from in the programming branch? | |
| Feb 11, 2015 at 12:05 | comment | added | Chris Pfohl | The last sentence is the solution. Explain the whole situation: "I've been trying to think of a way to keep from bothering you when I have questions. I think it could help if you commented. Or would you prefer I ____?" | |
| Feb 11, 2015 at 9:38 | comment | added | o0'. | Try to understand the code as far as you can, and only ask him when you really have no clue about something specific. This is a luxury you won't have if the uncommented code has not been produced in-house. | |
| Feb 10, 2015 at 23:08 | history | edited | Robert Harvey | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added 1 character in body |
| Feb 10, 2015 at 14:19 | comment | added | user | Like Jan Doggen said. Either schedule some time with him and buffer up questions that you find yourself struggling with while working with the code, OR consider emailing your questions to him. If you do email him, ask first to make sure he's okay with it, and before you email a question, do your best to find the answer yourself first. Email has the advantage that it is asynchronous: he can answer whenever he has a small block of free time, even if you are doing something completely different at the time, and the answer will still be equally useful to you when you get it. | |
| Feb 10, 2015 at 11:07 | comment | added | Jan Doggen | You can still ask questions but make sure they are to the point. "I've been looking at the code in X, but there's this thing I can't get my head around. Why did you do Y here?" And then you put the comment in. And maybe schedule some time for this kind of interaction. | |
| Feb 10, 2015 at 7:24 | comment | added | Celos | @AidanQuinn, Impostor syndrome (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome) can kick in hard at the beginning of a new job and even more so at the beginning of your first. If he says you're doing great, take him at his word. | |
| S Feb 10, 2015 at 1:03 | history | suggested | tsturzl | CC BY-SA 3.0 | Common mistakes |
| Feb 10, 2015 at 0:13 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Feb 10, 2015 at 1:03 | |||||
| Feb 9, 2015 at 23:46 | comment | added | user27207 | @pjc50 that idea sounds like it could be turned into a fantastic programming course. | |
| Feb 9, 2015 at 11:04 | comment | added | pjc50 | Exactly. Programming-as-a-trade effectively requires an apprenticeship (possibly self-taught), while CS courses may contain very little actual programming. They're symbiotic but not the same thing. You don't have to go to university to be a great programmer but it makes it a lot easier to get hired, even if the course has little relevance to the work you are applying for. | |
| Feb 9, 2015 at 10:56 | comment | added | JᴀʏMᴇᴇ | @AidanQuinn - you will do, I worked for someone who had very little patience for my mistakes and expected a lot of me. I really hate to say it, but in retrospect - it's the year of employment in which I learnt the most as a junior. Times won't always be this hard and confusing, you'll always be learning, but that becomes fun. For now, just get stuck in. And leave when the time's right (definitely stay open to the possibility of moving on eventually). | |
| Feb 9, 2015 at 10:42 | comment | added | dcorking | @pjc50 The exception that "proves" the rule that thousands of lines of unfamiliar code don't appear in courses: "To learn to deal with legacy apps, our students learn and enhance a large, popular, well-written (but poorly documented) open source app written in Rails." (Fox and Patterson, 2012) dx.doi.org/10.1145/2160718.2160732 | |
| Feb 9, 2015 at 10:35 | vote | accept | Aidan Quinn | ||
| Feb 9, 2015 at 10:34 | comment | added | Aidan Quinn | Thank you for giving me hope, I was actually thinking of just quitting the job and going to university or something. I spoke to him a little while ago and he said he is very impressed with my progress blah blah haha.. @pjc50 I totally agree with you on basically taking the test and lesson afterwards. Ive probably learn't more in the last month than the 3 years I've had in school! | |
| Feb 9, 2015 at 10:27 | comment | added | pjc50 | +1 for "Being sat in front of thousands of lines of code you're not familiar with is the norm" - this never appears in programming courses and it always appears in the job. | |
| Feb 9, 2015 at 9:09 | history | answered | JᴀʏMᴇᴇ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |