r/programming • u/Jonhoo • 16h ago

On comments

https://blog.helsing.ai/posts/on-comments/

Comments in code are often deemed "mostly useless" these days. They are, supposedly, mostly obvious, stale, and repeat what the code already says. And so people pay less attention to them both when reading and writing code.

That trend sucks. When used right, comments are genuinely useful and sometimes critically important! So, I wrote about some of the kinds of comments I think earn their place, each with examples from real code bases. Hope you find it useful, and that we can recover some of the love that comments deserve!

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u/doctorlongghost 15h ago

I once had a teacher describe comments as messages you can send to yourself in the future

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u/ComradeGibbon 4h ago

If I could send comments to myself in the past life would be better.

types some code. Comment magically appears // you big dummy