1505
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] AlexCory21@lemmy.world 62 points 1 week ago

I had a old job that told me that code is "self documenting" if you write it "good enough". And that comments were unnecessary.

It always annoyed the heck out of me. Comments are imo more helpful than hurtful typically.

Is it just me? Or am I weird? Lol.

[-] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 week ago

I absolutely agree, and I too hate this stupid idea of "good code documenting itself" and "comments being unnecessary".
I have a theory where this comes from. It was probably some manager, who has never written a single line of code, who thought that comments were a waste of time, and employees should instead focus on writing code. By telling them that "good code documents itself", they could also just put the blame on their employees.
"Either you don't need comments or your code sucks because it's not self-documenting"
Managers are dumb, and they will never realize that spending a bit of time on writing useful comments may later actually save countless hours, when the project is taken over by a different team, or the people who initially created it, don't work at the company anymore.

I've never had a manager that was even aware of the comments vs. no comments issue. If I ever had, I would have just told them that a lack of comments makes the original coder harder to replace.

load more comments (25 replies)
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2024
1505 points (99.4% liked)

Programmer Humor

18388 readers
594 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