[soulofmischief]

Lazy people work the hardest. It's an up front investment for a big payoff later when you can grok your code in scannable blocks instead of having to read a dozen lines and pause to contemplate what they mean, then juggle them in your memory with other blocks until you find the block you're looking for.

Comments allow for a high-level view of your code, and people who don't value that probably on average have a slower overall output.

[stevesimmons]

What you write in your first para is so self evidently true, at least to me.

I simply cannot comprehend the mindset that views comments as unnecessary. Or worse, removes existing useful comments in some quest for "self-documenting" purity.

I've worked in some truly huge codebases (40m LOC, 20k commits a week, 4k devs) so I think I have a pretty good idea of what's easy vs hard in understanding unfamiliar code.

[soulofmischief]

As the late Chesterton said, "Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up."

A lot of people think comments are descriptive rather than prescriptive. They think a comment is the equivalent of writing "Fence" on a plaque and nailing it to the fence. "It's a fence," they say, "You don't need a sign to know that."

Later, when the next property owner discovers the fence, they are stumped. What the hell was this put here for? A prescriptive comment might have said, "This was erected to keep out chupacabras," answering not what it is, but why.

You might know about the chupacabras, but if you don't pass it on then you clearly don't care about who has to inherit your property.

[ambicapter]

> Lazy people work the hardest.

What's amazingly funny is that many people think this is a positive, because they ascribe more value to working hard than to achieving results. I even thought your comment was going to go that way when I first read it.