"So either that, or they took that entire block of code and deleted it. So there's one of two ways of getting rid of it. If they commented it out, it would only take a couple minutes to reinstate it. It wouldn't be difficult to do. If they deleted it, they'd have to reconstruct all that code.
I suggested that to Diane Roark. That was the way that they probably did it, and they could reinstate it very simply, if they only commented it out."
If you are using version control, it would only take a couple of minutes even if you had deleted everything. You wouldn't have to rewrite all that stuff, just go back in the history.
I realize that this is off-topic to the main thrust of the discussion, but I found it a curious.
It seems to me, like the parent said, he's just simplifying a normal process. Sure, if his code was a few lines, and someone deleted a few you could use version control to get them back. On the other hand, if his code was a full fledged program, and the deletions were institutional such that further work was carried on after the deletions making the entire datflow go through different assumptions and processes, it would be significantly more difficult to reinstate. Preserving the dataflow might be done if you're just commenting out a line to test things. But if a whole chunk is straight up deleted, the flow of data will likely shift to be incompatible with the old way of doing things within a couple of revisions of the code such that no version control would help.
Ah yeah thanks for that explanation. It makes sense. I guess I wasn't thinking about the effect of the commented out code on the mind of the programmer trying to make the current version of the code "backward compatible" with the old feature.
I also use RCS but if I know that I should turn off something possibly only temporarily I won't delete all the code, especially if it is spread over more files. I can't imagine you wouldn't. Even big chunks of code can be turned off by a few carefully chosen "if (0)" or commenting out a few of the calls. So your argument is still invalid.
"So either that, or they took that entire block of code and deleted it. So there's one of two ways of getting rid of it. If they commented it out, it would only take a couple minutes to reinstate it. It wouldn't be difficult to do. If they deleted it, they'd have to reconstruct all that code.
I suggested that to Diane Roark. That was the way that they probably did it, and they could reinstate it very simply, if they only commented it out."
If you are using version control, it would only take a couple of minutes even if you had deleted everything. You wouldn't have to rewrite all that stuff, just go back in the history.
I realize that this is off-topic to the main thrust of the discussion, but I found it a curious.