this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2024
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The code shows what is being done. The comments should explain the why.
Yes. This 1000x. I hate it at work when I come across code that was written 3 years ago that has literally no traces of why it's there and a quick summary of what it does. Especially because that code is always the most abbreviated spaghetti you've ever seen. People should stop thinking (their) code documents itself because 99.999% of programmers cannot do it right.
I really like the Google way of coding: assume the person reading the code is the most 1337 programmer ever, BUT that this person knows absolutely nothing about the project
This is something a lot of people don't seem to understand. Even if code is self-explanatory, I want to know why it was designed that way.
I've fixed bugs where the fix was only a one line change, but it was extremely difficult to figure out, so I left a 10ish line comment above it explaining why it has to be done that way.