How about this to HELP everyone?

[Mr_J]

Hi all,

Since I started programing in php, I found it very difficult to figure out WHY and WHEN and WHERE to use whatever I need to do. I managed to help someone recently. In the php section of the page, I did the following:

Validate($username,&$password,&$retro,&$acc);     //Describes what we are going to validate
    if ($retro == '3'):                               //1st retro=the error when the username is invalid
more php...
$mysql = mysql_connect('xxx.your-server.de', 'usrname','pw') or die("Could not connect : " . mysql_error());  //connect to server or error occured
    mysql_select_db("the_database") or die("Could not select database");                                        //select the database where usrs are stored   

Just in short, I added a lot of comments to explain exactly what I do and why I do it. I`m sure this is going to help him not only to understand but learn faster. I know there is no quick way about learning but like supposed most of us, Everything I know about programming I had to teach myself. I only finished school with no other qualifications or after school studies.

Lets make the world a better place as HELL can`t be this bad

Just a thought...

[Mchl]

While commenting the code is indeed important, commenting every line of code, virtually translating programming language into human language, is not necessarily the best approach.

[grandman]

While commenting the code is indeed important, commenting every line of code, virtually translating programming language into human language, is not necessarily the best approach.

 

I can't disagree more, I wish when I first started to learn php, and asked for help on a forum someone had answered that way. It would have helped me tremendously. Even though I'm still learning, I use books, and code downloaded (which I dissect).

 

Every forum seems to answer a question with a question, why can't we just tell someone (at least the general direction) of finding the answer.

 

DG

[GingerRobot]

Comments really depend on your purpose. Sure, if you're writing a piece of code to explain something to someone, then it does usually help to add in plenty of comments - mainly because you've no idea of their level of expertise and general code reading ability; what may seem obvious to you could be very ambiguous to them.

 

However, i would never write code like that as general practice. Comments should generally be used to explain the purpose of an entire program/file/class/function or to explain and oddities/ambiguities in your code. For the most part, people can understand what your code is doing from reading it; there's no need to explain every line.

[keiran420]

INDENTATION INDENTATION INDENTATION

 

It makes code readable, and it makes it easy to see what gets executed when what happenes.../

 

As for comments, depends who is gonna read your code, comment what needs to be commented explained...

[Mr_J]

I agree to all of you. My point I`m trying to make is that I found it difficult learning to program just because someone told me what to code. It worked but I had no clue why or what is going to happen.

Like I have mentioned, I have no qualifications and all of my knowledge came from self-propelled studies and of course the internet and forums.

Thanks for the patrisipation

Jaco

PS. I launched my 8th website this year and only started coding about 6months ago

Thanks for all you guys, you indeed are contributing to "MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE"

Peace