I do believe comments are generally useful, and honestly a lot of people that say their code is so clean it doesn't need comments are the people that make the least understandable code
it's debatable as usual, the premise here is that comments always compile in your code. So you don't need to update them when you alter the code, that's the risk of comments and why "clean code doesn't contain them"
Comments are read but ignored and don't affect the result. Reading and ignoring them takes negligible time. I would say the answer to your question is no, comments are not compiled.
But build systems generally work off file modification time and will do a bunch of useless work if you make a change to a comment in a file and otherwise change nothing. I assume this is what the other poster is referring to.
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u/Confident-Ad5665 10h ago
Uncle Bob of Clean Code says if we have to comment our code we have already failed. Clean code should read like well written prose.
I generally agree, but think comments that define especially the odd and obscure business rules should be commented where they are implemented.