[Bf-committers] Doxygen docs?

[Alexander Ewering]

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005, joeedh wrote:

> The code is self-explanatory, after you finish having apoplexy at the 
> wierdness of it :)  .  Blender violates so many software-design "rules" that 
> it isn't even funny.  Also there is a contradiction between the design and

Dunno. I don't know about any software design rules, nor about any rules
in general in life. I guess that's a good attitude.

> the code: The design in abstracted, but the code is not (referring to the 
> main code in blender/source/blender of course).  I'm excluding the sound and 
> image modules BTW, I've never looked closely at them but they're in C++ and 
> they seem to be fine.

You see, this probably comes down to a question of taste. For me, your last
statement ("They're in C++ so they're fine") is the complete terror. I do
not really care about design as long as the code gets the stuff done and is
fast and reliable.

> Documentation would really help.  I figured out the sourcecode on my own, but 
> it sure would've helped to have nice code documentation.   Also with good 
> documentation C amateur's could more easily help code things (oh!  The 
> horror!).  This is, after all, an open-source project.

Of course it is ;-) But I think the way to go is different: Instead of 
trying to be a C university, Blender foundation should probably rather try
to attract more sophisticated developers, or developers with more time and/or
motivation on their hands. With motivation that comes, for example, from the
fact that *they* are Blender *users* and *not* only developers, or motivation
from getting paid.

There are two examples of those: One of our developers (a famous one) gets
more or less paid, and does a great job. Another one is an intense Blender
user, and probably is the second most active contributor to Blender's
codebase in general (even if not for the official codebase).

But this list is the wrong place for this discussion, and I started it.

So I'll finish now, and say: If you think it helps, just go ahead and
document. It certainly won't *hurt* :)

| alexander ewering              instinctive mediaworks
| ae[@]instinctive[.]de   http://www[.]instinctive[.]de