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In the last two examples, we made some kind of funny-looking code. Sure, it made sense at the time to call the freakOut method 3 times in a row to really have the guy freak out, but would you remember why you did that tomorrow? I week from now? What if someone, later, wanted to come along and tweak your code to do something different -- would they "get" why you called freakOut three times?
The code from 3.2 where we called freakOut 3 times:
This is a big problem in computing and software development. Almost all software is
- Written by teams of people. So they need to be able to read and understand each others' code.
- Modified and re-used over the years and across projects (how many versions of Windows have YOU used?). So this project team needs to be able to read and understand a previous project team's code.
Computer code can be complex, and humans sometimes need some extra help to understand it. How? They could create a word document and leave each other notes (and some of that happens). But computer programs also have a way for humans to leave simple notes to each other (or to themselves!) to help explain what a certain part of a code is doing -- to make it easier for another human when they are looking at that code.
This "note" option is called a comment. Comments in Alice are made by dragging the // tile at the bottom of the program window up into the code. Then, you should type a short, English phrase to help you (or someone else) understand and remember what this part of the code is doing.
Let's try it out. Let's make a comment for the program you wrote in module 3.3. Specifically, it's kind of odd to have that final call to the freakOut method. Drag a comment tile up right above that final method call. After you drop it, click on it and type in something like "Even after hearing the apology, the guy freaks out again"
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