Throwback Thursday: Why comments were invented
Request comes to pilot fish to provide employee data for the company-wide address book. That's no big deal.
"Time to code: 60 minutes," fish reports. "Affected employees: 8,000."
Flash forward two years: Senior executives get new cell phones that should be able to import the company-wide address book. Problem: The phone numbers are formatted for human beings to use, not cell phones.
New request: Change address book format so cell phones can dial the phone numbers automatically.
"Time to code: 10 minutes to comment out old code and add new code," says fish. "Affected employees: 8,000. Employees who actually need this data: 10."
Now it's another eight months later: Senior execs decide they're bored with having the entire company directory on their cell phones.