Re: Python

"Peter J. Holzer" <[email protected]> Sun, 21 Dec 2025 13:33:18 +0100

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.python.general
Message-ID	<legz46vr2ujmrx2rcypmgqrxvmui2phfhhmnldtuznu56uoqz4@vmmaawe2uloj>

On 2025-12-18 18:00:45 +0000, 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).

As a wise man once said,
"If the comments and code disagree, both are probably wrong."

> 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.

A large proportion of the comments I write are on somebody else's code.
And I write them precicely because I don't understand the code. So I
leave notes while trying to figure it out. Once I have figured it out, I
delete a lot of these comments again, because a) they aren't that
illuminating to a future reader, b) they aren't always polite to the
original programmer, and c) I rewrite the code anyway to make it more
readable.

        hjp

-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | Story must make more sense than reality.
|_|_) |                    |
| |   | [email protected]         |    -- Charles Stross, "Creative writing
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ |       challenge!"

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