Re: Python
dn via Python-list <[email protected]> Fri, 19 Dec 2025 10:12:45 +1300
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.python.general |
|---|---|
| Organization | DWM |
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
On 19/12/2025 08:52, Peter Flass wrote: > On 12/18/25 11:00, Richard Kettlewell wrote: >> Peter Flass <[email protected]> writes: >>> I comment *A LOT*. When I had to go back and revisit some very old >>> code, I wished I had commented more. I've almost never looked at a >>> program and said "I wish it had fewer comments." >> >> Regrettably, I’ve encountered plenty of comments that don’t actually >> reflect the code (for a variety of reasons). >> >> If the code is wrong and the comment is right then that’s great, you >> have a nice hint about how to fix the code, assuming you realize there’s >> a problem at all. >> >> However if the code is right but the comment is wrong then the comment >> is worse than nothing. The code would be improved by removing it >> (although almost certainly improved even more by correcting it). >> >> I’ve also encountered quite a few comments written by people who had >> been instructed to add comments to under-commented code, but didn’t >> really understand what they were looking at. The result generally >> obscures more than it illuminates. >> > > Since documentation never gets updated, if it's even created at all, > comments are the best you can get most of the time. Are your unit and integration tests a form of (technical) documentation and a guide for use? If start from the spec/user story (perhaps as a README.md in tests/) and reproduce appropriate sections (as comments/docstrings, hah!) in each test file, then will all flow-through? -- Regards, =dn -- https://mail.python.org/mailman3//lists/python-list.python.org