docstrings, invention there of

[Laura Creighton]

We think we were the first people to ever a) put the doc in the code
b) make the interpreter extract them.  We haven't been able to find
anybody earlier than us, at any rate.  If somebody is out there, I
hope he is reading this newsgroup so we can find out.  You _know_ when
you are not first, the rest of the time you just wonder.  I was
working for Sun when Gosling was making Oak which became Java.  (I
think.  They were in a different building and I wasn't quite sure what
they were doing at the time ... so maybe this was _before_ Oak was
being made.)  <I just checked.  before 1990 so before Oak.>
I do not think that I showed him Genesis directly, but we were in the same
community at the same time --- and even if I left Sun before Genesis
got docstrings, I pretty well infected everybody I knew about Genesis
as soon as I found out about it, and the number of people Gosling and
I have in common fit comfortably in a large football stadium.

At some incredibly early Java conference that Sun put on somebody
got up and asked where they came from and they said, er, some MUD, and
then somebody else at the conference reported the conversation to me.
I've read it in a trade rag too.  For more ask Jacob Hallén
jacob at cd.chalmers.se.  I don't know the exact details of how this was
done, cause I was backing the `code and documentation get out of sync.
Ideally we should have no documentation in the code at all.' position
at the time.  Indeed, it very likely was done in Genesis before my
first time there, and I just refused to use it until told to.  It is
hard to remember that far back, but that was my position on
documentation all through the 70s and 80s, so if I were there I know
what I said.

Laura