this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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I’ve seen code that look like this:
int delay = 15 * 60; // 10 minutesEven if the comment was on the same line someone forgot to update it. People just ignore comments.
Better solution is to write (in C#):
TimeSpan delay = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(15)Much more obvious what the code actually means.
A better comment would be
delay in secondsas that is the one thing not obvious from glancing at the code.Or just name the variable
delaySecondsif you really want to store it as an int. Bonus is that every use of the variable perfectly communicates what it is.Is the better way is a runtime performance hit. Does the compiler optimize this?
It’s probably a little bit slower, but there are other things more worth to optimize than to shave off a few microseconds from a 15 minute delay.
Yeah, it adds up eventually when working with embedded platforms, but for PC stuff I agree.
If you’re working in embedded I guess you can probably make an inline function or a macro so it’s taken care of at compile time.