Commenting, naming and numbering FileMaker scripts costs time now but saves far more later, two senior developers argue.
Comment why you did it, not only whatRichard writes five verbose lines per description because he may not see that code again for 18 to 24 months and can read that it sets a field but not why.
Script names and numbers beat memoryNick puts the action first so all his validates or adds group together; Richard's customers report problems as "layout 131" instead of a name.
Long scripts hide the context that breaks themNick deleted records — all his invoices — in the wrong context, and only found a weeks-old bug after breaking the script into visual sections.
Executive SummaryAI
Richard Carlton opens another FileMaker developer day on FM Training TV, which puts out about 600 on-demand videos a year and close to a thousand with live training, and sells courses only as bundles, including a double pack for 349.
Guest senior engineer Nick Hunter says he gives pretty much 15% of his time to keeping systems neat, clean and documented, because two or three weeks later nobody remembers what a step was for.
Answering Michael Gravel's question about script length, Nick warns that long scripts lose track of context and let you do something terrible like deleting records in the wrong context — he once hunted a bug for five or six weeks until FileMaker 14's script workspace let him break the script into sections and see he was in the wrong context.
Nick argues the script name matters even more than the comment: the first word is the action (add, validate, cancel, import, go to), then whether it is a trigger and which event fires it, while Richard insists on numbers because FileMaker identifies scripts and layouts by hidden IDs, and he asks customers for "131" rather than a layout name.
The pair then turn on copy and paste, kept only for backward compatibility: a copied social security number sits in the clipboard, a global buffer shared with every application, which is both a breach of security after FileMaker closes and extremely slow, and they close with Nick's renaming hack for moving a script between files, FileMaker's "check for problems" right-click, and custom import orde
Key Quote
“It's very short because when you code, you don't have time to read a novel.”
— Nick Hunter
Key Quote
“But the name of the script is key as well, even much more than the comment because it helps you to retrieve the script very easily.”