anchor.diff:  [cols="^1,^1,<2,<3",options="header"]
   |===
   |Revision |Date |Modified By |Description
  +|2 |2020-07-09 |Grant Erickson |Added Common > Language-independent > Commenting Out or Disabling Code
   |1 |2020-07-08 |Grant Erickson |Initial revision.
   |===
   
  
positive.code: == Best Practices, Coding Conventions, and Style
  
  [.text-center]
  _Revision 1_ +
  _2020-07-08_
  
  [.text-center]
  *Status:* [red]*Draft* / [red]*Active*
  
  toc::[]
  
  
negative.code: counsel of others in the group to find out what the right thing to do
  is. Never just start changing code wholesale for personal reasons
  without consulting others first.
  
  ==== Language-independent
  
  ===== Commenting Out or Disabling Code
  
  Unused code shall not be disabled by commenting it out with C- or
  C{plusplus}-style comments or with preprocessor `#if 0 ... #endif` semantics.
  
  ====== Motivation and Rationale
  
  Code should either be actively maintained and "in" the source base for a
  purpose or removed entirely. Code that is disabled in this way is
  generally sloppy and does not convey a sense of certainty and direction
  in the code.
  
  Anyone who is interested in the history of a particular source code file
  should use the source code control system to browse it.
  
  Code that is debug- or test-only should be moved to a conditionally
  compiled test source file or conditionalized with an appropriate
  `WITH_DEBUG`, `WANT_DEBUG`, `WITH_TESTS`, `WANT_TESTS`, or some similar such
  preprocessor mnemonic that can be asserted from the build system.
  
  :sectnums!:
  
  