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by crazygringo 99 days ago
> Lots of comments in code is a code smell. Yes, really.

No, not really. It's actually a sign of devs who are helping future devs who will maintain and extend the code, so they can understand it faster. It's professionalism and respect.

> If I see lots of comments in code, I'm gonna go looking for the intern who just put up their first PR.

And I'm going to find them to say good job, keep it up! You're saving us time and money in the future.
1 comments
palata 98 days ago
> It's professionalism and respect.

If someone gives me code full of superfluous comments, I don't consider it professional. Sounds like an intern who felt the need to comment everything because ever single line seemed very complex to them.

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crazygringo 98 days ago
Nobody said anything about "superfluous" comments.

I'm assuming "lots of comments" means lots of meaningful comments. As complex code often requires. Nobody's talking about `i++; // increment i` here.

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palata 98 days ago
> I'm assuming "lots of comments" means lots of meaningful comments.

That's not what literate programming is. Literate programming says that you explain everything in a natural language.

IMO, good code is largely unsurprising. I don't need comments for unsurprising code. I need comments for surprising code, but that is the exception, not the rule. Literate programming says that it is the rule, and I disagree.

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crazygringo 98 days ago
> Literate programming says that you explain everything in a natural language.

At a high level. Not line-by-line comments.

> IMO, good code is largely unsurprising. I don't need comments for unsurprising code.

I've never heard anything like that, and could not disagree more. Twenty different considerations might go into a single line of code. Often, one of them is something non-obvious. So you comment that thing. The idea that "good" code avoids anything non-obvious, that those are "exceptions", is frankly bizarre to me. Unless the code you write is 99% boilerplate or something.

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palata 98 days ago
> So you comment that thing. The idea that "good" code avoids anything non-obvious, that those are "exceptions", is frankly bizarre to me.

What I find interesting from the comments here is that there are obviously different perspectives on that. Granted, I cannot say that my way is better. Just as you cannot say that your way is better.

But I am annoyed when I have to deal with code following your standards, and I assume you are annoyed when you have to deal with code following mine :-).

Or maybe, I imagine that people who defend literate programming mean more comments than I think is reasonable, and people who disagree with me (like you) imagine that I mean fewer comments than you think is reasonable. And maybe in reality, given actual code samples, we would totally agree :-).

Communication is hard.

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