• philm@programming.dev
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    10 months ago

    Yeah, but unironic…

    If your code needs comments, it’s either because it’s unnecessarily complex/convoluted, or because there’s more thought in it (e.g. complex mathematic operations, or edge-cases etc.). Comments just often don’t age well IME, and when people are “forced” to read the (hopefully readable) code, they will more likely understand what is really happening, and the relevant design decisions.

    Good video I really recommend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf7vDBBOBUA

    • Pickle_Jr@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      10 months ago

      Yeah, another way I’ve heard it phrased is comments are for explaining why you did things a certain way, not for explaining what it’s doing.

      • heikomat@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Exactly that! Everyone can See “what” is happening, the code is right there. But the code usually doesn’t tell you “why” that is happening - good comments help understand the authors intent and give context, so you don’t have to guess.

        Good comments should explain the things that are not obvious.

        Good comments more than once prevented me from accidentially undoing a fix.

        • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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          10 months ago

          Yup my comments are generally along the lines of:

          • I could have done this X way, but it ran slower
          • I was running out of time so this it’s mostly copied from (stack overflow url)
          • refactor when time allows

          This is a side effect of doing lots of tiny websites , microcontroller code and mini web apps for under budgeted marketing projects with constantly changing designs and requirements that don’t need to last too long.

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      If you’re working with others, even simple code benefits from comments explaining what it’s intended to do. Sure you can read code and get a good idea of what it seems to do, but you can’t be sure that’s what it was meant to do, or why it was meant to do that. Having a quick statement from the author enables you to work faster. And if you find a mismatch between the comment and the code, it’s a smell that could mean a bug.

      And for methods and functions it’s particularly helpful to have a description at the top. Many IDEs will pop this up when you’re using the method, so you can quickly confirm that it’s appropriate for your needs and get your arguments in the right order.

      I even comment code for myself because it will save me time when I return to the project months later.

      No comments would be fine if you could trust that everyone writes code that does what it’s intended to do and you can read code as quickly as you can read English. Maybe I’m a poor coder but I find neither of these is usually true.

      • philm@programming.dev
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        10 months ago

        Don’t get me wrong comments != documentation (e.g. doc-comments above function/method).

        I probably was a bit unprecise, as others here summed up well, it’s the why that should be commented.

    • potustheplant@feddit.nl
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      10 months ago

      That’s like saying a book’s synopsis shouldn’t exist because you can just read the whole book. Sometimes comments can save you a lot of time and point you in the right direction.

      • BaardFigur@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Comments also helps explaining why certain non-obvious decisions are made. E.g. a workaround for a bug in a library

      • philm@programming.dev
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        10 months ago

        Nah, it’s not, code is modular (IME should be kinda tree-structured), a book is linear.

        So the API should be in your analogy the synopsis. And I haven’t said, that there shouldn’t be any comments. E.g. doc-comments above functions, explaining the use-cases and showing examples are good practice.

        • potustheplant@feddit.nl
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          10 months ago

          Books can be modular as well (ever heard of “Rayuela” by Cortazar?) But that’s beside the point. The analogy is fine and it works.

    • astraeus@programming.dev
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      10 months ago

      This mindset is good, but unfortunately enforces bad programmers to leave their undocumented code in critical places where someone eventually has to figure out what the hell they were doing or refactor the whole damn thing because they got promoted to middle-management and can’t remember why they even wrote it.

        • heikomat@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          If the comments tell you “what” happens, then yes, they can geht outdated fast. The details of how something works can change quickly.

          But comments documenting “why” something is done (a certain way) - explaining the intent - are probably valid for mich longer.

          In the best case comments aren’t viewed as something that is seperate from the code, but part of it. So that if someone changes the code, the comments has to be checked aswell (if the explanation of “why” something is done actually changed).

    • DaleGribble88@programming.dev
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      10 months ago

      I have such a love-hate relationship with that video. On the whole, I think that video is bad and should be taken down. The creator is arguing against a very specific type of commenting but is harassing comments in all forms. It even addresses as such with a 20 second blurb 2/3 of the way into video distinguishing between “documentation comments” - but doesn’t really provide any examples of what a good documentation comment is. Just a blurred mention of “something something Java Doc something something better code leads to better documentation” but doesn’t elaborate why.
      It’s a very devious problem in that I don’t feel like any particular claim in the video is wrong, but taken within the context of the average viewer, (I teach intro. comp. sci courses and students LOVE to send this video and similar articles to me for why they shouldn’t have to comment their spaghettified monstrosities), and the inconsistent use of comments vs. code duplication vs. documentation, the video seems problematic if not half-baked.
      In fairness, it is great advice for someone who has been working in the industry for 15 years and still applies for junior positions within the same company - but I can’t imagine that was the target audience for this video. In my experience, anyone who has been programming on a large-ish project for more than 6 months can reach the same conclusions as this video.

    • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      Code comments are useful for browsing a script and understanding it at a glance. I shouldn’t have to scroll up and down across 700 lines of code to figure out what’s happening. It’s especially useful with intellisense, since I can just hover over a function and get a tooltip showing the comment, explaining what it does. It also helps when using functions imported from other files, since it’ll populate the comment showing me what parameters are needed and what each should be. Comments save time, and time is valuable.

    • magic_lobster_party@kbin.social
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      10 months ago

      I’ve seen code that look like this:

      int delay = 15 * 60; // 10 minutes

      Even if the comment was on the same line someone forgot to update it. People just ignore comments.

      Better solution is to write (in C#):

      TimeSpan delay = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(15)

      Much more obvious what the code actually means.

      • 18107@aussie.zone
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        10 months ago

        A better comment would be delay in seconds as that is the one thing not obvious from glancing at the code.

        • magic_lobster_party@kbin.social
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          10 months ago

          Or just name the variable delaySeconds if you really want to store it as an int. Bonus is that every use of the variable perfectly communicates what it is.

      • CCatMan@lemmy.one
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        10 months ago

        Is the better way is a runtime performance hit. Does the compiler optimize this?

        • magic_lobster_party@kbin.social
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          10 months ago

          It’s probably a little bit slower, but there are other things more worth to optimize than to shave off a few microseconds from a 15 minute delay.

          • CCatMan@lemmy.one
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            10 months ago

            Yeah, it adds up eventually when working with embedded platforms, but for PC stuff I agree.

    • Awkwardparticle@programming.dev
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      10 months ago

      One day you will inherit a code base so bad that you’ll end up commenting old code just to make sense of it for yourself because nobody in the company has touched in a couple years and the last people that did no longer work there. It will be dangerously coupled, if you make the right change somewhere it will break everything else. It will be true spaghetti code where you spend 30 min just following a code path to figure out what and why an input into a function needs to be what it is to able to come out of another function in an exact format for anything to work.

      Your so called comment standards and principals are fine if you are building something from the ground up, but the other 95% of the time, you do what you gotta do because your were blessed with a turd that is impossible to polish.

      • philm@programming.dev
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        10 months ago

        One day you will inherit a code base so bad that you’ll end up commenting old code

        Will not be the case, I won’t take a job, where I have this situation (or I’ll quit pretty quickly)…

        Yeah my “comment standards” (btw. as others mentioned here, I was unprecise/unlucky with the choice of words, I meant “comment the why” or doc-comments totally fine and should be aimed)

        Your so called comment standards and principals are fine if you are building something from the ground up

        Yes that was also targeted with my comment. But what you’re referring to is just missing documentation, and I think this should be done on a higher level. The “comment why” rule applies for spaghetti code non-the-less…

    • Vilian@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      and if you need an unnecessarily complex code for performance sake?

      • hstde@feddit.de
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        10 months ago

        There’s a comment for you to explain the why.

        Rule of thumb: code explains the how and what, comments explain the why.

      • magic_lobster_party@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        Those cases are rare. Often the most basic solution is good enough.

        If you have to write complex code, then you should write a comment (write the name of the algorithm for example).

    • Cows Look Like Maps@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      10 months ago

      Or you’re stuck within the confines of a horrible legacy system which the business will not allow you the time to refactor/rewrite but still want your code to be somewhat readable.

      But in general, I agree with your argument. When writing from scratch or improving reasonably well designed code, often documentation could be replaced by breaking it up into another function or naming variable better. It’s a bit of a code smell for violating the SRP. And yet there are times that documentation is needed for the “why”. Things are nuanced I guess.