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Originally Posted by Zyr
Ok, going the extra mile in academics. I'd rather focus my attentoin on things I like, work on my own projects, and cruise through the rest. In the computer industry anyway, you're better off being able to say "Look at this website I made" or "this game I made" than pointing to some bits of paper, even if they have A's on them.
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Of course not. As you pointed out yourself, you got an A on your program, too, though you probably have a much shallower understanding of programming than your friend. Grades aren't worth "going the extra mile" because they're essentially without value. You go the extra mile for the inherent educational value (in this case) of going the extra mile itself.
If you do get a job as a programmer, you will eventually learn the value of "more comments than code" and "2 page readme's" when you get a job that takes more than 5 minutes. Or when you've done a bunch of uncommented "5 minute jobs" on a single project that's been shuffled around to a couple different departments, subtly broken, and now sent back to you for debugging... and you have no fucking clue what all that glob of uncommented code does because there are no neat divders to show where one of those "5 minutes jobs" ended and the next begins. And that's YOUR OWN code. Let's not even talk about how much you'll love getting to debug some other guy's code that in addition to being uncommented, doesn't even follow your thought process n how certain things are done. Or better yet, it's commented, but not in a useful way.
There is an inherent value to understandng a problem to the point that you can explain the solution in plain language (I.E. comments and readmes) before you solve it. You don't comment code because it will get you better marks (though you pointed out that it doesn't have much affect on the grade) so you can point at the assignments later and say "See? A! I am so smart." It so you pick up the habits that make you a better programmer so when you point at a website or a game you've written other people can read it and go "This guy is smart." and not "What the hell is this guy doing?".
What I'm getting at is that if you "go the extra mile" as a habit, then, even when you're NOT putting in the effort, you will churn out a better product than someone who was content to just "get by" because you have a better understanding of both the underlying material and how to do the work efficiently.