Yes I did. You never clarified if you replaced the original with your copy.

All of your refactoring and changes void the fixing of the bug in the copy. There is no guarantee that your changes before you even begin working on the bug, don't affect the bug. If you are only using the modified copy to figure out what the original is doing, then you may still be off because there is no guarantee that you refactored the original correctly.

If you are not replacing the original with your modified copy - once you are done with your modified copy, you then have to go through the same exercise on the original because your patches won't apply cleanly.

Either way you have doubled the work that you need to do. In which time you could have instead read the comments and decided if they matched the code.

Should you discard your modified original - you have wasted your employer's time (unless you are the employer). You may now be smarter about the code and have reached a certain nirvana, but you have expended effort on discarded code.

If you don't discard your modified original, then my points still stand.

What you choose to do with your coding practices is entirely up to you. If you feel implied guilt or feel maligned when people post nodes saying "one should comment one's code" and you don't, the issue lies with you. If you are comfortable in your practices that is wonderful -- I am happy for you -- no really, I am. You are under no obligations to anyone who posts or anything posted by other people (I apologize for saying earlier that you are obligated to - thinking about it you really don't have any enforced obligations to anybody - but that is a topic for future nodes). But comments against common practices, that haven't worked for you but do work for many other people, are bound to be ill received -- even when you are right.

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.