[asterisk-dev] Insulting source code comments in main/channel.c

[David Backeberg]

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 1:39 PM, Vlasis Hatzistavrou (KTI)
<vhatz at kinetix.gr> wrote:
> Indeed it is wise not to take offense only if _no offense was intended_.
> But can you really be sure about the intentions of the writer in that
> particular sentence of comment in the code?

I can be pretty sure that the writer was trying to explain that
multiple codecs needed to be tried in an effort to match a codec to a
call. To people who only ever use code one way, it is not always
obvious why other code exists.

This is not a criminal trial, and intent of an adjective in a comment
is irrelevant. It doesn't get compiled into the binary. I've put far
worse statements in my code, such as profanity, or an emotional
description of an API that wasn't designed the way I would have
preferred. I've even badmouthed my own code, to describe why an
argument to a function doesn't really match what you would expect.
This is what people were trying to say when they pointed at the
frequency counter for 'bad words' in kernel source code.

So now that this is up over 20 comments, I'm going to join the
suggestions that this discussion be moved to the bug tracker for
whomever legitimately wants to see the source changed.