21 Jul
2025
21 Jul
'25
10:21 p.m.
I work in an RF lab where coding is focused on DSP with radio signals
sampled as I/Q, in-phase/quadrature, streams. I'd guess our source code
is about 50/50 code/comment. It certainly isn't assembly, which I do
remember having trouble reading my own code afterward. But it's similar
to commenting assembly in that complex math (as in real/imag rather than
'complicated') is not very clear to look at as code. It never looks
like the equations on paper, so comments try to bridge the gap -
sometimes gulf.
Because IQ sigs are bundled up as exp(j theta), python with its builtin
support for complex numbers is amazing for quick efforts. When there is
a real need for speed, well, I admit there's still the ol' grand daddy
of formula translation... :-) But C is there as well in our lab!
Mike M
On 7/21/25 11:27 AM, Paul Winalski wrote:
When writing all but the most trivial bug fixes I
always put in a
comment referring to the bug report number. This helps with what can
otherwise be a perplexing problem: "why is this bit of code there?"
Good and copius comments were especially important in the days of
handwritten assembly code.
-Paul W.