this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
703 points (89.4% liked)

Programmer Humor

19606 readers
1097 users here now

Welcome to Programmer Humor!

This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!

For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.

Rules

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] heikomat 16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 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.