When working on website design and programming projects, I often wonder if it is common practice for experienced developers to maintain two sets of files - one for development and another for production like in jQuery.
For instance, I have a project where the Markup & CSS are heavily commented by me. The code is meticulously indented, spaced, and tabbed. Here's an example:
Markup
<!-- START google translate script link ================================================================== -->
<meta name="google-translate-customization" content="9f841e7780177523-3214ceb76f765f38-gc38c6fe6f9d06436-c"></meta>
<!-- END google translate script link ==================================================================== -->
<!-- START stylesheet link =============================================================================== -->
<link href="styles/main.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all" />
<!-- END stylesheet link ================================================================================= -->
<div id="header_text"><!-- START header_text ============================================================= -->
<h1 id="first-child">Pak United Food Services Ltd.,</h1>
<h1 id="last-child"><a href="http://www.pufs.org/" title="www.pufs.org">PUFS</a></h1>
<span></span>
</div><!-- END header_text =============================================================================== -->
CSS
/* START import ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- */
@import url("reset.css");
@import url("feature-carousel.css");
/* END import --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- */
/* START wrapper ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ */
div#wrapper
{
width: 100%;
font-family: Calibri, Arial, Georgia,Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;
font-size: 16px;
line-height: 22px;
background: url("../images/bg.jpg") repeat scroll 0 0 #1D2426;
}
/* END wrapper -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- */
Should we maintain two sets of files? One for development with all the comments, spaces, indents, tabs, and line breaks intact, and another trimmed down version for deployment? It might make the code less readable but more optimized for production.