In 99% of cases you are right. Though it is unclear if the tradeoff to use a more expressive language is worth it. For example, compiler optimizations can be qu

In 99% of cases you are right. Though it is unclear if the tradeoff to use a more expressive language is worth it. For example, compiler optimizations can be quite naturally expressed as graph transformations. However, the implementation is C/C++, so an occasional comment [0] with some ASCII art of the transformation is really helpful. There are cases where I disagree. For example, TODO and FIXME annotations cannot be always replaced by something like NotImplementedException. Sometimes code is so concise that it is not obvious why it solves the problem. Sometimes it is good to state why an "obviously better solution" is not applicable in a special case. [0] https://github.com/MatzeB/libfirm/blob/master/ir/opt/cfopt.c#L256 https://github.com/MatzeB/libfirm/blob/master/ir/opt/cfopt.c...