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by timr
4314 days ago
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"Comments decay. They aren’t compiled, and they’ll never get executed at runtime. If they become out of date or incorrect, no test is going to fail and no user is going to complain. Programmers work around them out of fear that “somebody might need this comment or it might provide some value in the future”, pushing them along far after they’re useful" The developers who say this are ticking time bombs of laziness on your team. Comments only "decay" if you don't read them, or if you don't take the 30 seconds to update them when you make a change. And if you're not doing that, then you're not doing your job, because the previous developer left the comment for a reason, and your defeatist philosophy of "comments are useless" is implicitly overriding that developer's judgment. Respect your colleagues enough to at least read what they've written and update it when it's incorrect! It's pretty disheartening to hear this from a "director of engineering", actually. I expect it from a new grad who has never worked on a team, or with code that has to live for more than a quarterly project, but I want a team leader to be doing everything possible to improve communication amongst team members. That includes compelling them to write and maintain good comments. |
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Comment decay is a rehash of "code that isn't written is never incorrect". Aka every change you make introduces an opportunity to make a mistake, including both writing and updating comments.