Re: comments (was Re: A critic of Guido's blog on Python's lambda)



Takehiko Abe wrote:
Ken Tilton wrote:


Absolutely. When I take over someone else's code I begin by deleting all the comments. Then I read the code.


Is this a great programming tip I've never heard before? Or
a mere joke?

Somewhere in between. I do not recall ever sweeping through an entire code base deleting all the commnets, I just delete them from stretches of code on which I have to work so I can see the damn code.

Recall that most people write borribly, and that natural language is anyway naturally ambiguous. Note also that comments do not run, code runs. Comments do not always (often? ever?) get maintained. Some comments state the obvious, especially for folks from the comment-every-line school, and do no more than obscure the landscape. Finally, if I am now the maintainer of a project, guess what? If there is any non-obvious code I need to understand it, and, yeah, I know how to read code. As I said, if the code is not readable, rectification of names is an entertaining and insanely productive way of studying code. Just reading it puts one to sleep.

kenneth

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