Dumb Question.

[Ed Vielmetti]

In article <817 at mara.cognet.ucla.edu> kroger at scarecrow.cognet.ucla.edu (James Kroger) writes:

    Question: how is one supposed to know what these programs do?
    The comments at the beginning always say something like
    "this is version 7 of the fourth release of binshellarchthing
    with modifications to the processthing to be compatible with the
    otherthing. Cut here."

    I never have any idea what the program is supposed to do. Why don't people
    say "this program does x y z...?"

 It's not always obvious to the author of the program how to describe
 what it does to other people in prose that they are likely to
 understand.  Code-writing skills and blurb-writing skills do not
 necessarily go together.  This can be especially true of the various
 esoteric bits of software that get flung around the net to solve very
 particular problems, the answer of course is "read the source".

 I would encourage people who write programs that make shar bundles to
 allow an option that would put the README file (or its moral
 equivalent) in the front part of the first shar bundle so that there's
 more text to look at.  Unfortunately some don't, and you just have to
 look at the package a little more closely to determine what's inside.

 comp.archives attempts to post things which are roughly 24 lines long
 and express in reasonable detail what programs are supposed to do.
 I'll occasionally put in something more like a "review" than an
 "announcement" since users often have a clearer picture of what's
 going on than authors.  You might want to add that to your reading
 list when looking for stuff.

-- 
 Msen	Edward Vielmetti
/|---	moderator, comp.archives
	emv at msen.com