this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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They do have a point though. When we’ve gone through phases where the industry focuses on commenting code and other documentation, most of it is useless.
Code comments should have a reason, and are no substitute for readable code.
However you’re also right though that people jump onto “all or nothing”. I recently did a code Review that I held up for comments. In this case, they were doing something very atypical to get around a limitation so it was a clear case of comments needed. The next person through will say “what is this shit?” And “fix” it, without knowing there was a good reason
Yeah "why" comments are absolutely fine, "what" comments are useless at best and can be harmful at worst.
I feel like this constant flood of "write comments" posts are from CS students who are told to comment everything by their lecturers. Descriptive variable and function names help explain the "what" of code pretty well most of the time.
Sure with some old languages like C89 where you are limited in your variable name length you probably do need comments to explain wtf is going on, but most code bases aren't as constrained.
I have this argument with other devs all the time.
Hey, you know this 200 line nested if statement that suddenly returns in the middle of the condition is "7"? Yeah, that needs a refactor or at least a fucking comment.
I get a pull request that adds a log line that reads something like "special case 7 triggered.".
Plot twist: it was a 7 Boom game.
Having no comments doesn't force code to be self-documenting. I understand the cult of code extremist, but No-Commenters are just WEAK and PATHETIC wannabes trying to immitate the true, functional extremists, such as the 16-Space-Tabbers