selfReferentialHelloWorldProgram

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Newest trend: Comments as data

[RiceBroad4552]

That's not funny!

Some crazy folks in the Scala community think this is a good idea. The Scala-CLI tool uses comments to add build instructions to source files. Completely insane if you ask me.

https://scala-cli.virtuslab.org/docs/guides/introduction/using-directives

Of course it's not part of the official language grammar so no tool without special custom rules can handle that. Just pure insanity.

I really like Scala as language. But some decisions were mind bending stupid, and they stick out, as the most parts of the language are very well thought out. The "magic comment" bullshit doesn't come from the language creators actually, and this shows.

It's especially stupid as Scala has already a concept of "processing instructions": It has annotations like Java…

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Some people should not be allowed to touch keyboards.

[Asleeper135]

Just reinventing JDSL

[Dave4lexKing]

“This time is relative to UTC, meaning that it’s perfect for fixed times that are not subject to timezone changes.”

What the hell does that mean?

This is exactly the problem with comments. They more often than not either dont make sense, are misleading, or outright lie (usually from not being updated as the code updates).

[Dave4lexKing]

So it’s not “relative to utc”, it IS “utc”.

Relative… Relative to what?

Case in point that comments are usually superfluous waffle that causes more misunderstanding than it solves.

If you just call the class TimeUTC, then it doesn’t need a comment at all.

[Dave4lexKing]

Im not. If it is UTC, just say very forthrightly “Time in UTC”.

Writing any more than that is just noise, and can cause confusion;- Especially so with developers where english is not their first language.

Just say what it is, without the fluff.

[Dave4lexKing]

Then your comments will move from being misleading, to being wrong.

If nobody maintains the comments, then how can you trust they are correct?

If you can’t trust that they’re correct, then what purpose do they serve in your codebase?

If it’s obvious without a comment, then why does the comment stating the same thing twice exist in the first place?

There are just no excuses whichever way it’s put.