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by h2s 4960 days ago
Note that the following does not count as commenting your damn code:

    // Get the account holder currency
    $currency = $accountHolder->getCurrency();
Imagine several 10s of KLOCs where 99% of the comments are as worthless as this and most people are content with their efforts because they believe they are commenting thoroughly.
3 comments

People learn this bureaucratic sort of stuff in school, where they are graded in a bureaucratic fashion.

As with all things, ROI is key. Your commenting effort is a finite resource. Expend it in the way that gets you the most value.

Those aren't comments, that's someone being lazy.

A comment should describe the why or the goal, not the how.

Personally I appreciate good "how" comments for algorithm implementations in C++, where the implementation in code isn't as clear as a (perhaps less efficient) pseudo-code version in the comments. "How" comments are just as valid as "why" comments, and the parent comment illustrates that "copy-comments giving no more information or intuition than the code" are worthless, which is why I don't have comments every 3-7 (not even every 20) lines like the submission suggests.
Two years later:

    // Get the account holder currency
    $security = $counterparty->getSecurity();