I've found that the best compromise is to use verbose "n00b-style" commenting in header files (or wherever your interfaces are defined), and sparse commenting i

I've found that the best compromise is to use verbose "n00b-style" commenting in header files (or wherever your interfaces are defined), and sparse commenting in the implementation. Interfaces are like contracts, so you want to make sure everything (including how corner-cases are handled) are explicitly described. With well-designed and fully-documented interfaces, the implementation code can usually be quickly understood even if it lacks comments and is written in a more "advanced" style.