Not at all. I use comments like this frequently. It might even be checked in while development is happening. However, the "whats" are taken out completely - t

Not at all. I use comments like this frequently. It might even be checked in while development is happening. However, the "whats" are taken out completely - the tests are better places to figure out how it works, anyway. The "hows" are mostly taken out -- if someone needs to know how it's working, it needs to be refactored. (And that's why I wrote the tests!) What remains are the "whys." Why was this algorithm chosen? Why does this look seemingly broken? Why is this code here? (IE, performance improvement led to a little less clean code.)