but I never actually trust that documentation to be accurate or up-to-date This is like saying food is bad, because it can spoil. Sure, but we have ways of pre

but I never actually trust that documentation to be accurate or up-to-date This is like saying food is bad, because it can spoil. Sure, but we have ways of preventing that and figuring out when it happens. A simple git blame or history (or the equivalent) should quickly answer a number of questions. Is the code significantly newer than the comment? Who can I ask for verification? etc. It's not perfect, but significantly better than the alternative. Similarly, presumably code changes are approved by reviewers, who should be preventing the merging of code that invalidates its own inline documentation without an update to the comments.