4 ms·

Many color schemes take the most important parts and fade them out: comments! In Haskell I have different colors for the comments, keywords, and literals. That

Many color schemes take the most important parts and fade them out: comments! In Haskell I have different colors for the comments, keywords, and literals. That's it. Anything more is not helpful. It's baffling to me to look at source on Github and see a screen full of comments, greyed out.

wodenokoto 11y ago
I hate when comments are highlighted. Makes it difficult to read the code as they distract me. The code is what is hard to read, comments are easy to read. I want help focusing on the code, I don't mind if the highlight structure doesn't help me read the comments as they are more than easy to read already.
seanmcdirmid 11y ago
Comments are like footnotes in a book: great for adding context to the main text, but they work really well when shoved off to the side somewhere, easily accessible to those who want them, easily ignored by those just into the main text (e.g. Author). Unfortunately, code typography is so horrible in our field that we lack the ability to use the bottom page margin or a side bar for this purpose, so we hack it up with what's easy: syntax highlighting.
- hga 11y ago
  Comments also lie. At best, they are a statement that, at the time they were last edited, the author believed their stated facts were true, or might become so, plenty are aspirational, "this is what this function or change to it, which I've not yet written, will do". He might have been wrong, or the code might have changed without updating the comment, the actual running code is the only truth.
  - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
    To some degree I agree, but even if they don't lie they can still get in the way of code reading given the current sad state of code typography. If comments were handled better, I bet they would be updated more regularly with code changes since it would be more of an eye sore if they weren't.
  - over 11y ago
    I find that comments at the top of functions are helpful when implementing an algorithm found in reference material, especially if they have a citation. At least that way you can check that the function appears to do what the reference material specifies. But generally commit messages, descriptive symbols, simple logic, short functions, and unit tests are better.

wodenokoto 11y ago

I hate when comments are highlighted. Makes it difficult to read the code as they distract me. The code is what is hard to read, comments are easy to read. I want help focusing on the code, I don't mind if the highlight structure doesn't help me read the comments as they are more than easy to read already.

seanmcdirmid 11y ago

Comments are like footnotes in a book: great for adding context to the main text, but they work really well when shoved off to the side somewhere, easily accessible to those who want them, easily ignored by those just into the main text (e.g. Author). Unfortunately, code typography is so horrible in our field that we lack the ability to use the bottom page margin or a side bar for this purpose, so we hack it up with what's easy: syntax highlighting.

hga 11y ago
Comments also lie. At best, they are a statement that, at the time they were last edited, the author believed their stated facts were true, or might become so, plenty are aspirational, "this is what this function or change to it, which I've not yet written, will do". He might have been wrong, or the code might have changed without updating the comment, the actual running code is the only truth.
- seanmcdirmid 11y ago
  To some degree I agree, but even if they don't lie they can still get in the way of code reading given the current sad state of code typography. If comments were handled better, I bet they would be updated more regularly with code changes since it would be more of an eye sore if they weren't.
- over 11y ago
  I find that comments at the top of functions are helpful when implementing an algorithm found in reference material, especially if they have a citation. At least that way you can check that the function appears to do what the reference material specifies. But generally commit messages, descriptive symbols, simple logic, short functions, and unit tests are better.