Re:Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
by msangi on Sunday March 25, 2018 @12:54PM
(#16673059)
The original comment says "they just weren't anywhere in the code that humans could see."
Where would you and the comment in a situation like that one?
I don't have anything against generated code but it should be visible and, as you said, it should be crystal clear where it come from
Re:Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
by ndh2 on Sunday March 25, 2018 @01:16PM
(#16673184)
I think in this instance it's also a matter of tools. Visual Studio/Visual Assist would have been able to find the class definition, and that's where the comment would go. For cscope it's a matter of configuration, which should be auto-generated by the build tool.
If the class is being used, then the definition has got to be somewhere, hopefully in a header. It's simply a file that is included somewhere. And it will be human readable. There is no magic.
Re:Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
by mikelevins on Sunday March 25, 2018 @08:38PM
(#16675619)
The class definitions were not in any file. That was the entire point. They didn't exist at all except as transient build artifacts.
// This %thing% was generated from %template% using data from %data%.
If your language is too restrictive to add sensible tools, you should write the tools yourself. As with any code, write it in a way such that other people will be able to understand it.
There is no magic, it's just code. I wish people would stop using that word.