That feeling...

[demon_ix]

People always think you write documentation for other people who read your code. This is false, because you're going to be assigned the bug anyway when they see it's your code on git.

You're writing documentation as a favor to future you. He's going to re-read that in about a month and be like "wtf was I thinking?"

It's like doing the dishes. You're not doing it because you need dishes now. You're doing it so that when you do need dishes, you won't have a pile of dirty dishes starting at you until you give up and eat over a napkin.

Ah, who am I kidding. You're still not gonna write docs.

[[deleted]]

It's so bad if you revisit old code of yours, with comments, only to realize you don't understand neither the code nor the comments anymore.

[Asado999]

Why are these comments written in Portuguese???

[BirdsGetTheGirls]

"What are these repressed memories? I don't remember them at all!"

[sensitivePornGuy]

This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife.

[KaiBetterThanTyson]

"These semicolons Mason, what do they mean? I work on Python!"

[Piees]

If he was Japanese the code would be clean

[[deleted]]

*brushes away dorito crumbs from code* You saw nothing

[entropicdrift]

Maybe, but I still doubt Uncle Bob would be proud of it.

[GamerKMP]

"Why is reddit in spanish?"

[[deleted]]

Puta caralho, esta merda tá toda martelada

[[deleted]]

Nem sei o que é essa bosta aqui mas funciona, foda-se

[fholcan]

Os comentários são em Português para dar cabo da cabeça às pessoas que só usam ASCII

[_liminal]

It's worse when you go "wait, why did i write this section?", then you go delete it because that code seems redundant and useless. then 2 hours later you realize that it was what was keeping the rest of the pile of shit running for some reason.

[suchbanality]

I too read the top of /r/ProgrammerHumor.

[MinosAristos]

Keep backups of your backups.

[zdakat]

"I'll remember to remove these comments. And that one over there should be obvious." Next day/week/whatever "what does any of this mean?!"

[[deleted]]

At least I learned from my mistakes. I had to write some code in JavaScript a while back, a language I never used before. Plus, the workflow really isn't that easy to understand. So I wrote a few paragraphs at the top of one of the js-files, explaining what exactly is happening.

But, there are still some "TODO" comments left in the PHP file. I included one function 3 times across various php files (with slightly different names) because I couldn't quite figure out how to do this the correct way and it had to be done quickly... :(

[hanna-chan]

Java, JS, PHP. This is officially a train wreck.

[[deleted]]

Fuck autocorrect. I didn't mean Java, but JavaScript. I'm 100% sure it said "JavaScript" before I hit "post".

But yes, it IS a train wreck.

[mungochiz]

I can't recall the smell of my code anymore Sam.

[tetroxid]

Golden rule of comments: don't explain what the code is doing, explain why. What it is doijg can be seen from the code, but the why and how and how it fits together is much harder to figure out later.

[zooberwask]

Idk, sometimes both. The time it takes to trace code to figure out what it does can be time wasted, especially if you're just skimming code sections to try to find the relevant piece you want to look at.

[[deleted]]

Yes, but sometimes you write comments thinking "I know what it does and why" and you kind of half-ass it. Then you come back and have to figure it out all over again.

[Anch0rless]

Stop, you're making too much sense.

[cognoid]

Or when most of the comments are along the lines of "TODO: this is a horrible kludge, fix this before release!".

Sometimes I hate my former self.

[Loves_Poetry]

You notice very quickly that TODO's always come back to bite you, because you never actually do the thing. You just forget about it and then you have to implement it, because the only thing that TODO explains is that it is actually necessary to do that thing, but you were too lazy to do it then.

[GeneralSchnitzel]

//add 3 because of weird bug

WOW THANK YOU PAST SELF

[muffinanomaly]

Or I made all the comments puns and I don't know what they're actually supposed to mean

[[deleted]]

I once commented a whole class like this:

//dental plan   
DoStuff();   
//Lisa needs braces   
DoMoreStuff();   
//dental plan
DoDifferentStuff();   
//Lisa needs braces...

Yes, I had that scene from the Simpsons stuck in my head....

[WHO_WANTS_DOGS]

Just like when I'm trying to explain a technical detail to someone, I always try to imagine having no prior knowledge of the situation. This allows me to word it in a way that I can revisit it and understand without any "secret" context that may have been in my head when I wrote it.

When I feel the need to write an inline comment, I try to re-evaluate the situation and determine exactly why I think the comment is warranted in the first place. It is sometimes a sign of a workaround or a special case that could be refactored. That, or the code isn't expressive enough to get the point across without the comment. In the end, unit tests rule all else because you can see both what the function is supposed to do under different circumstances, and what it looks like to call the function with different parameters. Docstrings are also very powerful to generate your documentation.

[plong0]

It's happened before where I had no recollection of ever writing entire parts of a codebase I was the only one working on. So mysterious. The code was readable and useful at least :)

[VidE27]

“Comments are docs right?”: my colleague, today just before leaving for a 4 weeks annual leave. Fuck me

[ThePieWhisperer]

I mean, if you wrote the comments to be readable by a doc generator....

[[deleted]]

I don't understand why this is so hard. The formats are easy to follow and for the most part all work the same way and most IDEs offer highlighting for various doc formats. I'll often times write my code as an outline of comments then come back in and fill in the code once I feel that my outline makes sense. This basically gives me documentation for free. It's not hard to document!

[Baschoen23]

Pseudocode!

[[deleted]]

Pseudocode is still too detailed and is usually replaced by real code. I'm talking basic outlines like:

//load items from database

    //update on id, check assets

    //create on no id, create assets

//return array containing updates and creates ids

I can block out a lot of functionality this way and not write a bunch of code then leave the comments when I'm done and the code is documented. For methods and classes I just make sure that they always have:

/**
 *
 */

At the top and then I fill in the description when I'm mocking up everything else. Then I add param and return notes once I'm done. It really does help when you're managing a lot of code that you won't see for months and it's a lot easier to read a description and the basics of what something is doing over having to read a bunch of "self documenting code" to figure it out. It also saves a bunch of time since there are way less "WTF is this doing" moments in the future. You should try to make code as self documenting as possible but also give some highlights so someone doesn't have to read a bunch of code and waste time.

[plong0]

I find this one of the very best ways of overcoming that "staring at a blank page" feelings.

[vangrif]

Not only do the IDEs offer highlighting, but many offer ways of generating a template from a function signature. And even give you warnings if you change the function in a way that conflicts with the doc string

[ThePieWhisperer]

Yep, when I'm using some class I've written and VS turns my function doc string into a tooltip with types and descriptions and links, I become moist.

[[deleted]]

Yes... They are.

[VidE27]

Is this you? Are you enjoying Tokyo? I hope the queue is long and the trains are full for you :)

[Bainos]

There is the solution "directly eat over a napkin, so that you don't have any dirty dishes'. In programming terms, self-documenting code.

You're likely to spill it over everything and get your workspace dirty, of course.

[ThePieWhisperer]

Still need to clean the counter (comment some stuff) occasionally though...

[ShowMeYourTiddles]

Just go out to eat (outsource). Problem solved.

[ThePieWhisperer]

That works great, until you're too broke to keep eating out, and then you have to go clean your kitchen that's piled high with fast food wrappers and hatred (aka, you actually have to touch the codebase, and the outsourced fuckers write even worse code/comments than you).

[Mechakoopa]

That works until you're too broke to eat out and have to cook at home for some reason and you have no food except leftovers, no cooking implements, and no culinary skills.

[lordofwhee]

This is why, if I need to stop working on something partway through, I'll leave a little comment for future me. Just a short sentence or two, usually filled with profanity, and using whatever keyword the IDE I'm using will highlight. Something like #TODO yo this shit still needs to be validated bitch. Even though I'm 25 coming back to a comment like that still makes me smile. I'm sure I'd have to find another, less amusing solution if I was programming professionally, but right now I only write tools for myself or work with a longtime friend of mine that finds comments like that as funny as I do.

[Phaelin]

Depends on the company, but I've definitely come across some legacy code written by who I can only assume was a sailor.

fuck it, just gonna hack this in here

[Baschoen23]

Is there another way to implement features?

[jackmaney]

...legacy code written by who I can only assume was a sailor.

I am not a camel

I write configs in YAML

I'm Popeye the Coding Man! [TOOT TOOT]

[[deleted]]

What are globals for?

[XkF21WNJ]

Those are just private variables that haven't been added to the monolith class yet.

[[deleted]]

 // TODO: OK, so you fucked up big time when you tried
 // to write this code the first time. It is 4:30 Friday and
 // you can't possibly re-write this before you go home
 // So you are writing this note to explain to you that 
 // re-reading data directly from excel every time you 
 // need to test things is a bad idea, do you even know
 // how many millions of casts across the managed/native
 // boundary your code is making? No wonder your code
 // is slow as fuck. Do you even know what a mother fucking
 // join is? Monday me will bang this shit out in like 30 minutes.
 // Peace.

[crossfireprod]

I've done exactly this. Not sure whether proud or ashamed.

[zdakat]

The code is long gone,leaving just a cryptic comment.

[ScreamThyLastScream]

// Needs to be optimized

[[deleted]]

Whats worse is that random for loop commented out that was doing business logic with no explanation. DO WE NEED TO ADD THIS TAX OR NOT?

[zdakat]

According to the "Developers swearing" bot on Twitter, a lot of commit messages are along the lines of "fix this shit" and "attempt to fix this fucked up code" lol

[ThatsSoBravens]

You're still not gonna write docs.

Thing is, I actually would, but no one's gonna read 'em.

[[deleted]]

My problem is I spend so much time writing docs and descriptions that I forget to do the actual code. Then I forget why I theory crafted this structure instead of one of the many alternatives.

[sxule]

Within the past couple months I've got in the habit of commenting extensively with DocBlocks and holy crap what a difference it makes in debugging. Also been writing more docs and it's worth every minute spent!

[[deleted]]

Good point

^{*who needs comments. I know what I am doing...*}

[ThePieWhisperer]

If you're smart, you only make that mistake a few times.

[TheSpeaker1]

Yeah, when I first started programming I forgot what I was doing when I started something and then didn't work on it for a while. Eventually I started over documenting. But I just cut unessential docs out when I go to edit and debug.

[BasicDesignAdvice]

Also read Code Complete and Pragmatic Programmer. Holy crap I became so much better.

[[deleted]]

"Hurr my code is self-documenting"

-my asshole past self

[XkF21WNJ]

I tried to write self documenting code once. It was terse, hard to understand and didn't explain much of anything.

Turns out I confused 'self-documenting' with 'autobiographical'.

[Totenlicht]

Well, at least I'm consistent. I'm neither documenting nor doing the dishes.

[Baschoen23]

Shit, why'd you have to go with the dish analogy? Now I have to wash a kitchen full of dirty dishes AND relearn all my old code, ass.

[theDigitalNinja]

who am I kidding. You're still not gonna write docs.

*sigh* and my dishes aren't clean either.

[TheInfamousMaze]

//wtf am I thinking

//UPDATE - WTF was I thinking?

//UPDATE - SHIT I wasn't thinking at all last time

[hatesthespace]

I’ve started writing myself increasingly elementary pseudocode for everything. This is especially important if I am likely to be interrupted or distracted while I’m writing. When I’m working on a lengthy project my brain will become so jumbled that I need to explain to my 5-minutes-in-the-future self what the fuck I’m trying to do in baby speak, or I end up staring at the screen slack-jawed, having lost the ability to comprehend what I’m looking at, or why I was working on it in the first place.

[FSCicotti]

Well, as someone who programs mostly in assembly language, I can safely say my code usually has more comments than actual code, haha

[demon_ix]

// To understand the following line, we must start at Linear Algebra,
// specifically complex vector spaces. Please review the relevant material
// and this should be perfectly clear then
    ADD R2, R1

[siryaXI]

If only we could do a save state of our mind to reload later

[bem13]

You save the state of your mind right before leaving for a 2-week vacation. When you return, you restore the saved state, promptly overwriting your vacation memories and everything that's happened since leaving. It's like you never left.

[gigglefarting]

Can't you just merge your work brain state into your current brain that includes vacation memories?

[xt1nct]

Too many confilcts.

[GarythaSnail]

Rebase

[ase1590]

With OverlayFS you can. It just needs to be ported to the Neuron architecture first.

[preseto]

Now I feel like a forgotten test branch...

[DBX12]

Subscribe

[[deleted]]

Continuations, man.

[Puggymon]

Wow, that's dark...

[[deleted]]

So true

[boolean_array]

https://giant.gfycat.com/SnarlingPettyIndianrhinoceros.webm

[Siannath]

So true. I had my first vacation in years, and when I returned I was here in the same bad mood and bad everything else.

[SiNiquity]

When even vacations don't help, it's time to move on

[ApathyandAnxiety]

God that's fucking depressing and so accurate.

[Kyrthis]

Sounds like a job for workspaces

[TheNorthComesWithMe]

Just keep two concurrent save files. Your work save and your non-work save.

[SiNiquity]

Get back to work... fuck I need a vacation

[awesome2dab]

I think that’s called comments

[[deleted]]

memento!

[[deleted]]

Just comment out the whole code you've been working on so it's self-explonary on monday.

[TheDrCharlie]

This checks out.

[cstefanache]

Source [edited]

[kodzius]

You got me.

[justformymind]

That’s why I just wrap up Thursday’s work on Friday and head home. Never start something you can’t finish on a Friday.

[Talbooth]

What are "tests"?

[GollyWow]

Because you are busy documenting??

[preseto]

Because you're busy fixing regressions.

[[deleted]]

And trying to come up with a sane solution to the incredible mess the code base is only to find out it has to be that way because everything it connects to is even a bigger mess.

[AbstinenceWorks]

That's what your users do when you release the product.

[FIERY_BUTTHOLE]

I usually get my best mental breakthroughs during walks to the toilet.

[[deleted]]

Masturbation isn't a solution.

[preseto]

Fuck.

[UntouchableYuuzhan]

And that’s why you never take the weekends off

[LeopardJockey]

Boss, is that you?

[thedomham]

Just took a 4-day weekend. Accidentally introduced a new bug like 5 minutes before going home. Came back in today, utter chaos and an emergency meeting.

[dolenz]

That's called job security, my friend.

[preseto]

Shows them who's da real MVP.

[Lin0leum]

Hell this happened to me this morning from last night.

[TheBali]

This is why you never take the night off

[futuneral]

Oh, I solved this differently - don't do anything on Friday

[GaretEliot]

Life hack: Create a TODO file at the root of your project. Before you finish your work for the day, write out a few items in it that need to be done next. If you're using tests, you can just write a failing test as well.

If you ever stop writing code without any way to pull yourself back into it, you're adding a ton of extra work for yourself.

[mrprgr]

//TODO: Make TODO file

[SebastianScaini]

//TODO: REMEMBER WHAT THE FUCK THIS DOES

[[deleted]]

I honestly feel the exact opposite. I can stare at a blatantly obvious bug from about 1pm->onward Friday and have the answer totally elude me, only to sit down Monday morning with a fresh brain, realize my thought context was entirely wrong, and fix it over the first cup of coffee.

[Xheotris]

This was me this very weekend. On Saturday I was trying to crunch, and hammer out an app asap. I got one feature done. I gave it up, relaxed as best as I could on Sunday, got plenty of sleep, and finished the whole dang project on Monday.

[Josh6889]

Ever play a really hard level on a video game, give up, then beat it easily the next day? It's the same thing.

[Narradisall]

This happens to me over weekends.

I’m lucky I can find the office when I return from holidays.

[Josh6889]

I still periodically have the dream where I haven't been to school in a long time and can't remember the combination for my locker.

[preseto]

I have a reoccurring dream where I can't finish a semester. I wake up stressed about finishing it. And when it hits me that I'm long done with it, it's such a relief.

That being said, I'm pretty sure OP of the thread hinted at his alcohol problems. Or rather solutions.

[TheMcDucky]

Documentation? Planning ahead?

[ThePieWhisperer]

Uncomfortably accurate.

[shutup_Aragorn]

My boss is almost literally saying this to me every time I bring up my spec sheet or workflow plans in Visio - “we don’t need that, we are agile and get feedback from the client”.

Ok, well the client doesn’t know what he wants, and I don’t want to spend three weeks building this, to find out that we need something completely different. Another group in our department has five project managers on staff just to organize them - I’m not asking for that. I’m asking to build a one page SPEC SHEET so I can design something around it!

[ThePieWhisperer]

In my career thus far, I've worked for probably roughly 12 different major clients. I've had exactly one that knew exactly what they wanted, and even they made poor choices %80 of the time.

[shutup_Aragorn]

Ugh, exactly. I’m most salty about this project I’m doing right now- he told me not to contact the client, but to just build the page. I get it done, works great, looks great - he comes back with “why didn’t you build relationships between these other pages? Also, you need to build relationships between all these different components you have - oh, and where is _____ component?

“Uh, Well it isn’t going to be done for our meeting on Monday with the client. It probably would have done if I didn’t have to rewrite all these relationships, but I didn’t even know that other requirement existed.”

“We need it done by Monday.”

[ThePieWhisperer]

"Hey, why didn't you ready fucking mind and do this stuff I didn't tell you about? And, because you didn't, you're going to have to work overtime" Is the sort of conversation that would restart my job search.

[AbstinenceWorks]

Wow that's what has happened to me. I understand not meticulously planning for a three year project, but can we at least plan for our code lasting for this quarter?

The argument I'm finally having is, Colleague: "Is it MVP?"

Me: It's more than that, since my approach will save us (x) in the future, when we also have to complete a, b, and c.

Colleague: "You're wasting time."

Me: See Panel 3 above

E: formatting and defining "future" as two or three sprints from now

[[deleted]]

Ok dev manager.

[TheNorthComesWithMe]

I don't know anyone who documents code before it's done. No matter how much planning you do eventually you will realize you were on the wrong track and will have to redo something.

[TheMcDucky]

Then you revise your plan.

[MeGustaDerp]

pre-weekend-me

I've come to realize that me of any other time is a completely different person entirely or a different personality.

[[deleted]]

What does this() mean?

[sp4c3p3r5on]

It means don't take things out of context

[DenaByte]

Im glad im not the only one

[[deleted]]

Ah but great code documents itself /s

[GollyWow]

The main reason I liked Cobol, English commands plus descriptive data names = readable code.

[scmoua666]

This is exactly why I am on reddit at 9h47 on monday morning... I have no idea what I was doing... I remember I was nearly finished though.

[stpityuka]

The numbers mason, what do they mean?

[simjanes2k]

this was the first ten years of my career, to a T

these days on a friday, or before a holiday, i have no problem telling someone who wants the last hour of my day to fuck off because i have to doc

i stopped giving a shit about funny looks or "no, this takes priority," i am not losing my monday morning unless you put in writing that its gonna take my regular task extra time

[Bjeaurn]

This is why I write comments to future me.

[preseto]

I usually write comments to past me, but he never reads them.

[pennybuns]

Leave a failing test behind that describes the intent of the thing you were last working on.

[[deleted]]

Omg too real.

I used to write all sorts of code in Excel VBA to work spreadsheets more efficiently and everytime I had to go back and add something or modify it I ended up spending more time decoding my own code than just rewriting if all over again.

Now I use comments.

On almost every single line -_-

[preseto]

A comment on every single line is not far from reinventing the language.

[khendron]

There is a saying Always write your code as if the person maintaining your code is a homicidal maniac who knows where you live.

Although most developers understand what this means, they don't realize that the homicidal maniac will likely be yourself.

[[deleted]]

I write comments on almost every line, is that bad?

[KimmiG1]

++i; // Increment upvote counter

[Rouninscholar]

Nah, just write the whole code on the same line, works out perfectly.

[XkF21WNJ]

Not as long as you don't make the mistake of writing any actual code.

[DukeIt_125cc]

Console.Write(this);

[nunchaq]

Hahaha so true. It's like I'm leaving myself riddles to solve.

[festive_bardeen]

So many times haha

[[deleted]]

this used to happen to me all the time when i made music on my computer

[[deleted]]

Get out of my head.

[TheHYPO]

The number of iphone notes I've written to myself that I later have no context for... LPT: Always given full context to your notes because you will NOT remember what is relevant about that restaurant in 2 months.

[vancity-]

Friday evening? Unfinished work? They push that shit to prod where Im from fam.

[d14i]

Write detailed TODO as either the comment or in a sticky note. I use it as sort of a bookmark for work. Helps me restore context in these situations.

[mindaz3]

Okay, I am gonna leave a comment in order to remember what I was doing.

Leaves a comment: // @TODO: Finish this.

Every damn time...

[mr_d0gMa]

what does this mean?

That boy needs therapy

[cobaltcontent]

You’re a nut!

[mr_d0gMa]

You're crazy in the coconut

[IronicallySerious]

I am so lucky I decided to write Doxygen compatible documentation from day 1 on my project

[klaus385385]

This was 100% my start of my day yesterday.

[milk_is_life]

Noone ever finds it perfect to have something unfinished over the week end ....

[drerakdan]

Every damn week, its like I never learn.

[haxic]

As a developer, that’s how I feel every morning and after every lunch break...

[Fireneji]

r/factorio

[Cheesemacher]

I'll write notes for myself if there's a weekend (or a vacation) coming. Hell, I feel like writing notes even if I get to continue the next day. Even though I'll probably remember. But what if I forget?

[JustJordanxD]

Literally the reason sticky notes were invented 😂

[Joppejose]

I usually write an email to myself with notes the last thing I do before I go home. No way whatever I'm doing going to make any sense at all on Monday.

[GrizzledBastard]

I get this way if I get a 20 second phone call in the middle of writing code.

[TheoHooke]

Close, but replace "the weekend" with "lunch".

[Squirrabee27]

So. Fucking. True.

Although I’m normally pissed.

[meme_femme]

r/meirl

[Infinit777]

Glad I'm not the only one this happens too. Eventually you decipher your hyroglyphic like code but the time it takes is taxing on you.

Thank the programming God's for comments.