[palata]

> 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.

[crazygringo]

> 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.

[palata]

> 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.