Code Courtesy

As a programmer you get to see a lot of people's code and more often than not you have to change some of that code.  Sometimes all you need to do is change a sign or the order of a variable or two, but most of the time you have to make a modest change.  Now if that change has to go back to the orginial owner its a common courtesy to comment it.  Especially if there are hundreds or thousands of line of code within a project.  So why am I stating the obvious?  Because a co-worker of mine recently had a run in with a senior level engineer at another company.  This engineer didn't comment his changes and then had the gall to say "Can't you read code?" when asked to do so.  What kind of response is that.  Of course I can read code, but when I don't know what you changed it makes it a little hard to find those changes especially when there are over a thousand lines.

So the lesson here is don't be an asshole and comment changes you make to someone else's code.