Re: Auto Fill Comments

[Arthur Miller]

Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com> writes:

>> Sent: Friday, November 27, 2020 at 8:03 PM
>> From: "Arthur Miller" <arthur.miller@live.com>
>> To: "Christopher Dimech" <dimech@gmx.com>
>> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
>> Subject: Re: Auto Fill Comments
>>
>> Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com> writes:
>>
>> > My experience has been that as I got to do more things in emacs lisp,
>> > the understanding needed quickly exceeded my rate of learning.
>> > One can get to sophisticated constructs, even when trying to do
>> > relatively simple things.  You never know where your original
>> > plan could get you. Many times the importance of a work is not
>> > measured by its consequences (i.e. by the final command).
>> That is probably because you try to do more difficult things then
>> before.
>>
>> I have been using Emacs for like almost 20 years, and was enough with
>> setq-ing few variables, and wrapping ocassional few lines in a defun to
>> put it on a hook.
>
> I used to argue that code must be adequately commented.  Later on I realised
> that adequacy is determined by the skill of the reader.  Currently I advocate
> that code comments are to give an overview of the code to help you reduce
> the downtime required to work on the code after a time of inactivity.
>
> Documentation, however, is to be structured according to different levels
> of sophistication.  But I understand it could be a lot of work to complete.
> Was not my intention to deride anyone. but to describe how it is.  
> Documentation
> is always better than no documentation.  And everyone does as one can.

True. However, Emacs manuals are written by volunteers with limited
resources in their spair time (I hack Emacs as a hobby when I drink
coffee), so what is practical has also to be take into account. They
have to prioritize what level they put themselves on, especially Elisp
manual.

I think it currently has good balance between targetting basics and
advanced usage.