[justinram11]

> Oh, and the original author doesn't work here anymore so no one's here to explain the original code's intent.

To be fair, even if I still work there I don't know that I'm going to be of much help 6 months later other than a "oh yeah, I remember that had some weird business requirements"

[stouset]

Might I recommend writing those weird business requirements down as comments instead of just hoping someone will guess them six months down the line?

[mnsc]

So even if comments are flawlessly updated they are not a silver bullet. Not everyone are good at explaining confusing concepts in plain English so worst case you have confusing code and a comment that is 90% accurate but describe one detail in a way that doesn't really match what the code says. This will make you question if you have understood what the code does and it will take time and effort to convince yourself that code is in fact deterministic and unsurprising.

(but most often the comment is is just not updated or updated along with the code but without full understanding, which is what caused the bug that is the reason you are looking at the code in question)

[michaelcampbell]

> So even if comments are flawlessly updated they are not a silver bullet.

This "has to be perfect in perpetuity or it is of no value" mentality I don't find helpful.

Be kind to FutureDev. Comment the weird "why"s. If you need to change it later, adjust the comment.

[mnsc]

I don't think comments need to be perfect to have value. My point was that if a certain piece of code is solving a particularly confusing problem in the domain, explaining it in a comment doesn't _necessarily_ mean the code will be less confusing to future dev if the current developer is not able to capture the issue in plain English. Future dev would be happier I think with putting more effort into refactoring and making the code more readable and clear. When that fails, a "here be dragons" comment is valuable.

[MichaelZuo]

They can write a very long comment explaining why it is confusing them in X, Y, Z vague ways. Or even multilingual comments if they have better writing skills in another lanaguage.

And even if they don’t know themselves why they are confused, they can still describe how they are confused.

[mnsc]

And that time spent writing a small paper in one's native language would be better spent trying to make the code speak for itself. Maybe get some help, pair up and tackle the complexity. And when both/all involved is like, we can't make this any clearer and it's still confusing af. _Then_ it's time to write that lengthy comment for future poor maintainers.

[stouset]

And any attempt whatsoever is some improvement over doing nothing and wishing luck to the next guy.

[chairmansteve]

Thing is, good documentation has to be part of the company's process. eg, a QA engineer would have to be responsible for checking the documentation and certifying it. Costs money and time.

You can't expect developers, already working 60 hour weeks to meet impossible deadlines, to spend another 15 hours altruistically documenting their code.

[ropable]

Any documentation at all > no documentation, 99 times out of 100. And requiring your people to work 60 hours/week is symptomatic of larger problems.

[switchbak]

How about old, out of date documentation that is actively misleading? Because that’s mostly what I run into, and it’s decidedly worse that no documentation.

Give me readable code over crappy documentation any day. In an ideal world the docs would be correct all of the time, apparently I don’t live in that world, and I’ve grown tired of listening to those who claim we just need to try harder.

[yearolinuxdsktp]

Every line of documentation is a line of code and is a liability as it will rot if not maintained. That’s why you should be writing self documenting code as much as possible that’s obviates the need for documentation. But unlike code, stale/wrong doc will not break tests.

Spending 15 hours documenting the code is something no leader should be asking of engineering to do. You should not need to do it. Go back and write better code, one That’s more clear at a glance, easily readable, uses small functions written at a comparable level of abstraction, uses clear, semantically meaningful names.

Before you write a line of documentation, you should ask yourself whether the weird thing you were about to document can be expressed directly in the name of the method of the variable instead. Only once you have exhausted all the options for expressing the concept in code, then, only then, are you allowed to add the line of the documentation regarding it.

[RaftPeople]

> Only once you have exhausted all the options for expressing the concept in code, then, only then, are you allowed to add the line of the documentation regarding it.

But that's what people are talking about when talking about comments. The assumption is that the code is organized and named well already.

The real world of complexity is way beyond the expressiveness of code, unless you want function names like:

prorateTheCurrentDaysPartialFactoryReceiptsToYesterdaysStateOfSalesOrderAllocationsInTheSamePrioritySequenceThatDrivesFinancialReportingOfOwnedInventoryByBusinessUnit()

The code that performs this function is relatively simple, but the multiple concepts involved in the WHY and HOW are much less obvious.

[actionfromafar]

Or you know, work the devs 40 hour weeks and make sure documentation is valued. Everything costs one way or another, it's all trade-off turtles all the way down.

[sanderjd]

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

"We don't write any documentation because we can't afford a dedicated QA process to certify it" <- that's dumb.

[bccdee]

Yeah: "what if this code becomes tech debt later" applies to everything, not just comments. It's a tradeoff.

The best thing you can do to avoid creating debt for later maintainers is to write code that's easy to delete, and adding comments helps with that.

[rtpg]

An outdated comment is still a datapoint! Including if the comment was wrong when it was first written!

We live in a world with version history, repositories with change requests, communications… code comments are a part of that ecosystem.

A comment that is outright incorrect at inception is still valuable even if it is at least an attempt by the writer to describe their internal understanding of things.

[more-coffee]

This. I have argued with plenty of developers on why comments are useful, and the counter arguments are always the same.

I believe it boils down to a lack of foresight. At some point in time, someone is going to revisit your code, and even just a small `// Sorry this is awful, we have to X but this was difficult because of Y` will go a long way.

While I (try to) have very fluid opinions in all aspects of programming, the usefulness of comments is not something I (think!) I'll ever budge on. :)

[temporallobe]

> // Sorry this is awful, we have to X but this was difficult because of Y

You don’t know how many times I’ve seen this with a cute little GitLens inline message of “Brian Smith, 10 years ago”. If Brian couldn’t figure it out 10 years ago, I’m not likely going to attempt it either, especially if it has been working for 10 years.

[larsrc]

But knowing what Brian was considering at the time is useful, both due avoiding redoing that and for realising that some constraints may have been lifted.

[xnx]

We should call them code clues

[buttercraft]

What if you don't know that the comment is wrong?

[lexicality]

IMO the only thing you can assume is that the person who wrote the comment wasn't actively trying to deceive you. You should treat all documentation, comments, function names, commit messages etc with a healthy dose of scepticism because no one truly has a strong grip on reality.

[rtpg]

Right, unlike code (which does what it does, even if that isn't what the writer meant) there's no real feedback loop for comments. Still worth internalizing the info based on that IMO.

"This does X" as a comment when it in fact does Y in condition Z means that the probability you are looking at a bug goes up a bit! Without the comment you might not be able to identify that Y is not intentional.

Maybe Y is intentional! In which case the comment that "this is intentional" is helpful. Perhaps the intentionality is also incorrect, and that's yet another data point!

Fairly rare for there to be negative value in comments.

[temporallobe]

It just occurred to me that perhaps this is where AI might prove useful. Functions could have some kind of annotation that triggers AI to analyze the function and explain it plain language when you do something like hover over the function name in the IDE, or, you can have a prompt where you can interact with that piece of code and ask it questions. Obviously this would mean developer-written comments would be less likely to make it into the commit history, but it might be better than nothing, especially in older codebases where the original developer(s) are long gone. Maybe this already exists, but I’m too lazy to research that right now.

[bccdee]

But then could you trust it not to hallucinate functionality that doesn't exist? Seems as risky as out-of-date comments, if not more

What I'd really like is an AI linter than noticed if you've changed some functionality referenced in a comment without updating that comment. Then, the worst-case scenario is that it doesn't notice, and we're back where we started.

[Zondartul]

Comments that explain the intent, rather than implementation, are the more useful kind. And when intent doesn't match the actual code, that's a good hint - it might be why the code doesn't work.

[hedora]

If a developer can’t write intelligible comments or straightforward code, then I’d argue they should find another job.

[pixl97]

I mean it's easy to say silly things like this, but in reality most developers suck in one way or another.

In addition companies don't seem to give a shit about straightforward code, they want LOC per day and the cheapest price possible which leads to tons of crap code.

[hallway_monitor]

Each person has their own strengths, but a worthwhile team member should be able to meet minimum requirements of readability and comments. This can be enforced through team agreements and peer review.

Your second point is really the crux of business in a lot of ways. The balance of quality versus quantity. Cost versus value. Long-term versus short term gains. I’m sure there are situations where ruthlessly prioritizing short term profit through low cost code is indeed the optimal solution. For those of us who love to craft high-quality code, the trick is finding the companies where it is understood and agreed that long-term value from high-quality code is worth the upfront investment and, more importantly, where they have the cash to make that investment.

[pixl97]

>I’m sure there are situations where ruthlessly prioritizing short term profit through low cost code is indeed the optimal solution

This is mostly how large publicly traded corps work, unless they are ran by programmers that want great applications or are required by law, they tend to write a lot of crap.

[mlloyd]

>In addition companies don't seem to give a shit about straightforward code, they want LOC per day and the cheapest price possible which leads to tons of crap code.

Companies don't care about LOC, they care about solving problems. 30 LOC or 30k LOC doesn't matter much MOST of the time. They're just after a solution that puts the problem to rest.

[michaelt]

If a delivery company has four different definitions of a customer’s first order, and the resulting code has contents that are hard to parse - does the Blake lie with the developer, or the requirements?

[TrololoTroll]

If the developer had time to do it, with him. Otherwise with the company

I'm sure there's some abysmal shit that's extremely hard to properly abstract. Usually the dev just sucks or they didn't have time to make the code not suck

[larodi]

Business requirements deviate from code almost immediately. Serving several clients with customisation adds even more strain on the process. Eventually you want to map paragraphs of business req to code which is not a 1:1 mapping.

Aging codebase and the ongoing operations make it even harder to maintain consistently. eventually people surrender.

[ozim]

Then in 3 months someone in between came changing the code slightly that makes comment obsolete but doesn’t update the comment. Making all worse not better.

Issue trackers are much better because then in git you can find tickets attached to the change.

No ticket explaining why - no code change.

Why not in repo? because business people write tickets not devs. Then tickets are passed to QA who also does read the code but also need that information.

[jounker]

Why did the reviewer approve the change if the developer didn’t update the comment?

It sounds like people are failing at their jobs.

[ozim]

Oh that is one of my pet peeves.

"If only people would do their jobs properly".

So we just fire all the employees and hire better ones only because someone did not pay attention to the comment.

Of course it is an exaggeration - but also in the same line people who think "others are failing at their jobs" - should pick up and do all the work there is to be done and see how long they go until they miss something or make a mistake.

Solution should be systematic to prevent people from failing and not expecting "someone doing their job properly".

Not having comments as something that needs a review reduces workload on everyone involved.

Besides, interfaces for PRs they clearly mark what changed - they don't point what hasn't been changed. So naturally people review what has changed. You still get the context of course and can see couple lines above and below... But still I blame the tool not people.

[ajuc]

Requirements should be in the JIRA. JIRA number should be in the commit message.

You do git blame and you see why each line is what it is.

Comments are nice too, but they tend to lie the older they are. Git blame never lies.

[SleepyMyroslav]

A code tends to be reused. When it happens jira is not likely to travel alongside the code. All 'older' jira tickets are useless broken links. All you have in practice is jira name. It usually happen with 'internal documentation' links as well.

Git blame often lies when big merge was squashed. I mostly had these in Perforce so I might be wrong. Also when code travels between source version control servers and different source version control software it also loses information.

I would say in my gamedev practical experience the best comments I saw are TODO implement me and (unit) test code that still runs. First clearly states that you have reached outside of what was planned before and 2nd allows you to inspect what code meant to do.

[jounker]

One of my favorite conventions is ‘TODO(username): some comment’. This lets attribution survive merges and commits and lets you search for all of someone’s comments using a grep.

[ben_w]

I tend to do:

  // TODO: <the name of some ticket>: <what needs to happen here>

e.g.

  // TODO: IOS-42: Vogon construction fleet will need names to be added to this poetry reading room struct

I've not felt my name is all that important for a TODO, as the ticket itself may be taken up by someone else… AFAICT they never have been, but they could have been.

[TeMPOraL]

Jira entries get wiped arbitrarily. Git blame may not lie, but it doesn't survive larger organizational "refactoring" around team or company mergers. Or refactoring code out into separate project/library. Hell, often enough it doesn't survive commits that rename bunch of files and move other stuff around.

[K0nserv]

Comments are decent but flawed. Being a type proponent I think the best strategy is lifting business requirements into the type system, encoding the invariants in a way that the compiler can check.

[larsrc]

Comments should describe what the type system can't. Connect, pitfalls, workarounds for bugs in other code, etc.

[throwup238]

Thank god we’re held to such low standards. Every time I’ve worked in a field like pharmaceuticals or manufacturing, the documentation burden felt overwhelming by comparison and a shrug six months later would never fly.

[mnau]

We are not engineers. We are craftsmen, instead of working with wood, we work with code. What most customers want is an equivalent of "I need a chair, it should look roughly like this."

If they want blueprints and documentation (e.g. maximum possible load and other limits), we can supply (and do supply, e.g. in pharma or medicine), but it will cost them quite a lot more. By the order of magnitude. Most customers prefer cobbled up solution that is cheap and works. That's on them.

Edit: It is called waterfall. There is nothing inherently wrong with it, except customers didn't like the time it took to implement a change. And they want changes all the time.

[namaria]

> We are not engineers. We are craftsmen

Same difference. Both appellations invoke some sort of idealized professional standards and the conversation is about failing these standards not upholding them. We're clearly very short of deserving a title that carries any sort of professional pride in it. We are making a huge mess of the world building systems that hijack attention for profit and generate numerous opportunities for bad agents in the form of security shortfalls or opportunities to exploit people using machines and code.

If we had any sort of pride of craft or professional standards we wouldn't be pumping out the bug ridden mess that software's become and trying to figure out why in this conversation.

[alternatex]

That is quite a cynical take. A lot of us take pride in our work and actively avoid companies that produce software that is detrimental to society.

[namaria]

It is cynical but it is also a generalization better supported by the evidence than "we're craftsmen" or "we're engineers".

If you can say "I'm a craftsman" or "I'm an engineer" all the power to you. Sadly I don't think we can say that in the collective form.

[nyarlathotep_]

> If you can say "I'm a craftsman" or "I'm an engineer" all the power to you. Sadly I don't think we can say that in the collective form.

My cynicism of the software "profession" is entirely a function of experience, and these titles are the (very rare) exception.

The norm is low-quality, low complexity disposable code.

[mnau]

> Both appellations invoke some sort of idealized professional standards

The key point of the comment was that engineers do have standards, both from professional bodies and often legislative ones. Craftsmen do not have such standards (most of them, at least where I am from). Joiners definitely don't.

Edit: I would also disagree with "pumping out bug ridden mess that software's become."

We are miles ahead in security of any other industry. Physical locks have been broken for decades and nobody cares. Windows are breakable by a rock or a hammer and nobody cares.

In terms of bugs, that is extraordinary low as well. In pretty much any other industry, it would be considered a user error, e.g. do not put mud as a detergent into the washing machine.

Whole process is getting better each year. Version control wasn't common in 2000s (I think Linux didn't use version control until 2002). CI/CD. Security analyzers. Memory managed/safe languages. Automatic testing. Refactoring tools.

We somehow make hundreds of millions of lines of code work together. I seriously doubt there is any industry that can do that at our price point.

[generic92034]

> We are miles ahead in security of any other industry. Physical locks have been broken for decades and nobody cares. Windows are breakable by a rock or a hammer and nobody cares.

That is not such a great analogy, in my opinion. If burglars could remotely break into many houses in parallel while being mostly non-trackable and staying in the safety of their own home, things would look differently on the doors and windows front.

[mnau]

The reason why car keys are using chips is because physical safety sucks so much in comparison with digital.

The fact is we are better at it because of failure of state to establish the safe environment. Generally protection and safe environment is one of reason for paying taxes.

[rcxdude]

OTOH, the level of documentation you get for free from source control would be a godsend in other contexts: the majority of the documentation you see in other processes is just to get an idea of what changed when and why.

[Yiin]

there is difference between building a dashboard for internal systems and tech that if failed can kill people

[throwup238]

Most software work in pharma and manufacturing is still CRUD, they just have cultures of rigorous documentation that permeates the industry even when it's low value. Documenting every little change made sense when I was programming the robotics for a genetic diagnostics pipeline, not so much when I had to write a one pager justifying a one line fix to the parser for the configuration format or updating some LIMS dependency to fix a vulnerability in an internal tool that's not even open to the internet.

[Mikhail_Edoshin]

Well, a hand watch or a chair cannot kill people, but the manufacturing documentation for them will be very precise.

Software development is not engineering because it is still relatively young and immature field. There is a joke where a mathematician, a physicist and a engineer are given a little red rubber ball and asked to find its volume. The mathematician measures the diameter and computes, the physicist immerses the ball into water and sees how much was displaced, and an the engineer looks it up in his "Little red rubber balls" reference.

Software development does not yet have anything that may even potentially grow into such a reference. If we decide to write it we would not even know where to start. We have mathematicians who write computer science papers; or physicists who test programs; standup comedians, philosophers, everyone. But not engineers.

[ozim]

Difference is that code is the documentation and design.

That is problem where people don’t understand that point.

Runtime and running application is the chair. Code is design how to make “chair” run on computer.

I say in software development we are years ahead when it comes to handling complexity of documentation with GIT and CI/CD practices, code reviews and QA coverage with unit testing of the designs and general testing.

So I do not agree that software development is immature field. There are immature projects and companies cut corners much more than on physical products because it is much easier to fix software later.

But in terms of practices we are way ahead.

[dambi0]

Isn’t this similar to saying the valves and vessels of a chemical processing system is the design and documentation of the overall process?

I know that it’s frequently reposted but Peter Naur’s Programming as Theory Building is always worth a reread.

The code doesn’t tell us why decisions were made, what constraints were considered or what things were ruled out

[larodi]

The word code comes from Latin coudex which seems mean - to hack a tree. Are we then not mere lumberjacks with the beards and beer and all :)))