3 ms·

Can We Code Without Comments?

• yotamkadishay 9y ago
  Well, wdyt?
• celticninja 9y ago
  Comments should explain why something was done not what it is doing. The code should explain what is being done and the comments give it context, so perhaps a legislation change meant rewriting something to do with tax or a bug caused by interacting with another piece of software required the change. That's what you comment not a human version of what the code is doing.
  • yotamkadishay 9y ago
    But is it maintained like code? Maybe we can try to improve our code to avoid having many comments?
    • Freak_NL 9y ago
      Good code is legible and may not have a lot of comments at all, but the comments that are there add value. And honestly, what codebase doesn't have these: // This looks weird and redundant, but is necessary because of a // sneaky bug in libbar (libbar issue tracker #123) that might be // fixed in their upcoming 2.0 release. Without it a race condition // can occur at seemingly random intervals. See our issue tracker // #456 for the whole nasty story. barProvider.fertilizeFoos(null); No amount of code is going to convey the same crucial information. And yes, a professional programmer will maintain that piece of documentation.