

Comments Mean Failure - ingve
http://arne-mertz.de/2015/05/comments-mean-failure/

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anigbrowl
_I don’t like comments, because having to comment a piece of code means the
code itself does not express everything there is to know._

False premise. Comments often serve to explain things that are not immediately
obvious. Consider a code base for a domain-specific application that you're
unfamiliar with - you can learn by studying function and variable names and so
forth, but since many of these are domain specific it may not be at all
obvious what those things are for. Likewise, in complex code bases you might
have to deal with a variety of edge conditions, and those by definition are
frequently not obvious, or we'd have far fewer bugs.

It's true that if yo stare at the code long enough you'l eventually work out
what it all does/ But that's like saying that if you wave a narrow flashlight
beam around in a dark room for long enough, you'll eventually work out the
contents of the room, or that if you look at enough individual bricks, you'll
work out the shape of the building.

