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What are your programming hot takes?
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Programming
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If your code files don't contain more lines of comments than lines of actual code, then you're doing it wrong. (For Python, docstrings count as comments)
And your comments shouldn't say what each line of code is doing. If you can code, then you can already tell what each line is doing by just reading the code. The comments should explain WHY it's being done this way, or HOW it's being done, or highlight some pitfalls that might snare a future developer, and generally just give some higher level context to a line or block of code.
@257m @programming
Oh fuck I hate encountering this level of commenting. If it's complicated, you should have a design doc. Source code is not where you write your dissertation. Simple explanations are good, especially since the code could be updated while the comment is likely to remain unchanged. Long expositions are usually the result of bad coding or improperly allocated design.
Absolutely agreed. If your code line by line isn't clear, then the code is the problem.
Commenting before a block of code (a function / algorithm or whatever) explaining what it is meant to do, absolutely that's great though, saves time when revisiting.
And that one single line that makes zero FUCKING SENSE AND YOU SPENT 5 DAYS TRYING TO FIX IT!!! That definitely needs a comment so the next idiot (aka you in 6 months) doesn't think "what useless shit is this? Let's delete this!".