[jlc]

LOL. I'm going to explain this for myself and then never look at this cursed thread again.

What is important is to clearly communicate the intent of code to the next developer (incl., yourself) who comes across it. Comments are one tool provided to do this. I write comments. I approve pull requests containing comments. But comments are not the only tool, and they're not the best one.

Now most of the time there's no particular difficulty establishing the intent of code. Sometimes, though, there's something weird, something that looks "wrong" but isn't. In those cases, I isolate the weird change using abstractions (at least a variable, but probably a function, a method, a class); I name it and any components well -- long, descriptive, using appropriate conventions; I put automated tests around it, which will fail if anyone changes it without understanding it, providing helpful and explicit error messages (where tools allow); and I write a developed, full explanation in a commit message (which IME will not be too hard to track down, if you've isolated the "weird" change using an abstraction).

That will almost always communicate the the intent. If it doesn't, I (reluctantly) comment it up.