Talked to a retiree at a shop near St. Paul who made me rethink G-code comments

Was swapping stories with this old timer who ran a Haas for 30 years. He said he never writes comments in his programs because "the machine doesn't read them, and neither should you after the third run." At first I thought he was just being stubborn, but he pointed out that I spend more time maintaining my notes than actually cutting parts. I've been putting short comments in my code for years, but now I'm wondering if I'm just adding clutter... Has anyone else found that stripping comments makes your workflow smoother?

2 comments

2 Comments

river_scott4d ago

Huh, that's actually a really good point. It's like how people spend hours organizing their garage shelves but never actually fix the lawnmower. Or how some folks keep rearranging their phone apps instead of just calling their mom. The old timer might be onto something where the act of organizing can become a substitute for doing the real work. At some point you have to ask if the notes are helping you cut metal faster or if they're just a comfortable habit that eats up time.

alice2424d ago

Can't believe you just compared taking notes to rearranging apps on a phone. That's exactly what I catch myself doing with my own lists. I spend twenty minutes making the perfect to-do list, then another ten minutes color coding it, and by the time I'm done I've used up all the time I had to actually do anything on it. The lawnmower analogy hits close to home too. I've got a whole notebook full of "improvement plans" for my business but I'm still putting off the actual improvements. Makes me wonder how much time I've wasted organizing the organizing itself.