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> but I personally have never seen it. I have. That said, I think we are on the same position on the issue. When I've seen such comments, it's when someone
by ergothus 8y ago
> but I personally have never seen it.
I have.
That said, I think we are on the same position on the issue. When I've seen such comments, it's when someone that didn't understand the value if comments is responding to a request to ask them.
Thus is not necessarily because they are being deliberately obtuse, but because they never really experienced helpful comments. To me, 90% of the time a good comment wont say what's happening, instead it will say WHY it is happening. If good coding practised makes the code itself clear, good coding practice makes the context the code is written in clear.
But for those new, and/or those too use to a particular codebase or just never exposed to good comments, they wont get it, and when asked to do one (either as a general request or in a code review) the strawman is what you get (usually not as ridiculous as this example, but equally useless).
I see it as a cycle when learn to code: first we find comments useless so we skip them where we can. Then thus becomes normal, so we are used to seeing no or only useless comments. Then one day we look at code that we know we were confused on before but have forgotten why. On the N-th time of this, we leave the one line comment that says the secret. On the N plus one-th time, we read that comment and are enlightened. We then spend years trying to figure out the magic behind a useful and a useless comment, and arguing with those who think only useless comments exist.