When one is writing a programming system (or a book, for that matter), one needs to keep the entire system paged in one’s mind. Interruptions break one’s chain of thought but if the interruption is short, one can usually page in the system after some code review. After an interruption of months or years, I frequently find myself referring to papers, books, or notes in which I have documented my algorithms to refresh my memory of what I previously coded. I guess what I am saying is that good comments and documentation are a great benefit to the original system designers as well as others who
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