Out from beneath the bridge emerged a hideous troll. From the nearby town, it heard viewpoints other than its own, and this caused the troll to gnash its teeth and stomp its feet in rage. Eventually it was provoked into a mindless attack on the townsfolk, though what it hoped to accomplish was unknown… even to the troll itself. It just knew it could not let the townsfolk’s merriment go undisturbed.
Some fought back with the troll, trying to match its rage, but this only pleased the terrible creature, causing it to dance a happy troll dance in glee. Others just ignored the silly troll, and this only enraged it further. “I am the troll!” it shrieked, “I disturb your peace! Will you not fight me?”
The troll then continued its mindless attack, clawing at doors at gnawing at the sides of buildings when no one went to engage it. The townspeople found this quite amusing, but knew that, if this happened too often, the pitiful creature would have to be slain.
Anyhoo, I found out there is this odd thing that people sometimes add to software programs. It’s like a line of code, but the compiler completely ignores it. What’s the use of a line of code the compiler would ignore, you ask? Apparently it’s in case someone else may read the actual code I wrote, and these seemingly useless lines would help explain the rest of the code. I believe these things are called “comments”. I’m a hardware engineer, so the way of the software programmer are weird and scary to me, yet I must conform to their customs. Thus I need to go into work today to do this “commenting” so that I may meet a deadline.
I guess that pretty much means nothing to you guys, but, anyway, since there have been so much happening in recent events, Rumsfeld’s comments can’t wait until Wednesday. Thus there will be a press conference tomorrow morning… despite the anger of the trolls.
Wow, your trolls are even stupider than my trolls. I didn’t think that was possible. In fact — I’m jealous! Not really… eh, I’d just delete all their comments anyway. That really drives them up a tree. It’s as if they never existed, all their hard typing at the internet cafe next to the college campus wasted! And it costs $4.25 an hour! 😀
This is my first troll, so I’ll defer to your wisdom, Andrea. I was thinking, though, I could also just modify the comments to they all say nice things.
Almost anything can have some redeeming value, if you find a way to cook it. Unfortunately, I heard that trolls aren’t even good to eat.
shouldn’t you be able to find out Swift’s IP?
What kind of hardware are you programming? Embedded processors and what not?
Movable Type is wonderful. It lets you control every aspect of your blog.
Frank–
I have known many software people who are also unfamiliar with the concept of commenting, so don’t feel too bad about it.
Comments in code are for the weak and timid! There’s no better way to maintain job security than using unidentifiable variable names and undecipherable code structures…
Dennis,
I tried to convince them that my code was too convulted to understand even with explanations of it, but they didn’t and said I still had to write comments.
I would suggest you place large quantities of your blog in as comments. I know I enjoy a good joke in a piece of code far more than most of the worthless comments I encounter.
Technical writers LIKE comments. It stops them from bothering you as you work.
Ducks
My solution for trolls: one or two mags of .45 ACP, then another mag for their dog.