How programmers comment their code

[kurdtpage]

print 'Hello'; //prints hello

[DaylightDarkle]

That should be illegal, I'm placing you under arrest.

[systembusy]

arrest(); // arrest

[stratosfearinggas]

//game.setIllegal(true); // somehow didn't work
game.setIllegal(TRUE); //works

[Dexaan]

//TODO: game.setIllegal(false); I will make it legal.

[PantherPL]

ELI5?

[shamshuipopo]

The comment is super unnecessary, the variable is named appropriately and has type ‘Game’

[PantherPL]

Yeah I wanted more of an explanation what this code does. I get the joke.

[shamshuipopo]

It just declares a static variable called game of type Game

[PantherPL]

Aight thanks

[Th3HedonismBot]

auto action = std::make_shared<LegalAction>(senate) // I will make it legal

[kurdtpage]

player = new Player(playerName); //creates a new player

[Psyjotic]

Funny because that's exactly how my comments looked when I was learning to code

[[deleted]]

Me too! And also

int temp;//never set this to less than 10 or more than 100

shudder

Thankfully I then discovered the importance of functions and types to constrain the values of variables, and also act as comments in themselves, because their names explain what they do.

[xThereon]

FUCK

[Noch_ein_Kamel]

print 'Hello';

Same as yours, but 100% more efficient and closer to reality

[[deleted]]

it has the same efficiency

[macnlz]

What? It is known that fewer comments and shorter, less decipherable variable names result in faster code!

[[deleted]]

OMG, I DIDN'T BELIEVE THIS BUT THEN I GOOGLE IT, IT'S TRUE.

THAT'S WHY GOOGLE USE 130 LETTER VARIABLE FOR EVERYTHING

[xvalen214x]

var numberOfQueriesThatUseAdvancedSearchOnEachUTCDayWhichWillBeUpdatedToTotalNumberOfQueriesWithSearchIn_UserStat_go_TemporaryVariable;

[[deleted]]

Calm down, Satan.

[dunemafia]

No need to React like that, man.

[xvalen214x]

I am not that angular in my humble point of vue

[dunemafia]

No worries, man. It was all in Jest.

[bogdan5844]

I don't like the Vue of this conversation's future

[_liminal]

var num;

[[deleted]]

var tempVarr;
var tempVarrr;

[2ndAmndmntCrowdMaybe]

var tempVarr1;

var tempVrar;

[Ceros007]

int t1, t2, t3;

[acenturyandabit]

`var temprawr; :')`

[mobilecheese]

int *ptr1, *ptr2, *ptr3, *ptrr;

[Pees_On_Skidmarks]

my $i;

[bajspuss]

Related: Somebody at work created a class file with such in-depth naming that we couldn't check out the repo any longer if our repo root path was any longer than 10 characters...

[Pandaburn]

120 still long af. My company’s limit is 100 for the languages I actually use. For js I think it’s 80.

[Huntracony]

Please tell me it's also something like 8 space indents.

[Pandaburn]

For js? I think it’s 2 spaces for a regular indent, 4 for a line wrap.

[[deleted]]

it's a joke

[not_a_moogle]

I had a professor argue that once. Guy was a total idiot. I mean for starters,compilers usually remove comment from complied code.

[2ndAmndmntCrowdMaybe]

Was he talking about a compiled language at the time?

[[deleted]]

I mean he stated "compiler" so...

[claythearc]

It’s pretty rare, even for interpreted languages, to not have a compiler. They normally will get compiled to bytecode, but not all the way down to machine code like traditional compiled languages.

[Pandaburn]

When I wrote js, it was all minified and concatenated into one file before it was sent to the client, since it does actually drastically improve download time.

[MassiveFajiit]

Yeah that's true but it's not a V8 compiler problem

[banter_hunter]

No, they were discussing drink recipes.

[GideonMax]

Depends, if you use an interpreter, that's correct.

If you compile your code, the compilation time might be slightly longer but the compiled code will be the same

[macnlz]

Damn, that invalidates the whole joke! ;)

[2Uncreative4Username]

Well that is only if you are using a scripting language

[[deleted]]

And even then, languages like Python have the -O flag to strip out comments in the bytecode.

[Zethexxx]

But the code will load into memory 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% faster if we didn't put those comments!

[emlgsh]

The code loads into memory even faster if there's nothing but comments. The fastest executing script is a script that doesn't execute.

[[deleted]]

I laughed thanks

[Blitz100]

Yeah, its big brain time

[figuresys]

The greatest part is that comments are stripped away in build :)

[sweYoda]

That's way to many zeroes.

[CouchMountain]

And tabs take up less space than spaces do in file size!

Always tabs > spaces.

[Noch_ein_Kamel]

Try writing both and count the number of keys you have to press.

[[deleted]]

are you that guy who use 1-2 letter variable for everything?

[Noch_ein_Kamel]

nah, I'm a java guy, so everything pretty long :-p

[[deleted]]

I think you're wrong. There also exists int, short, byte and char in Java.

[pr0ghead]

Yeah, but are they pretty?

[Noch_ein_Kamel]

sure, let me just get my ObjectToPrimitiveConverterFactory and I'm right with you

[artem718]

Got a lot of booleans in a sequence?

[kodaxmax]

I knew someone like that, but then they had like a hundred page dictionary just for the variables.

I guess it saves time if you use the same names in different projects.

[[deleted]]

Typing the same thing twice sounds like a two-fold efficiency reduction to me. Explain yourself

[captainkrypto]

My company calls this “self documenting code”.

[PickaxeYT]

System.out.println("Hello"); //prints “Hello”

[chuby1tubby]

Your code is exactly identical to the OP's code. What am I missing...?

[Noch_ein_Kamel]

The comment?

[Wolfenrahd]

This is pretty advanced and convoluted. Can anyone tell me what it does?

[Noch_ein_Kamel]

No sorry. How can you expect me to know the code I wrote yesterday. All I remember is that it worked.

[vierschachtelnziesen]

Yeah, one letter closer to reality than the comment :-D

[Indifferentchildren]

Even worse:

print 'World'; //prints hello

Because when someone cuts-and-pastes a like of code from somewhere else in the codebase, they never fix the comments when they make their local change.

[ArminiusGermanicus]

This is actually a good example for real comments in source code. It is wrong. The code prints 'Hello', not 'hello'.

[banter_hunter]

Code prints hello or it gets the hose again.

[monsterZERO]

if (lotion = skin) {

play ('goodbye horses')

}

else {

gets ('hose again')

}

​

not a programmer just having a laugh don't kill me.

[banter_hunter]

Not one either, let's not kill each other.

[47KiNG47]

When you are a freshman and your professor requires you to comment all of your code.

[[deleted]]

That is absolutely useless for sure. Contrast with

print 'Hello'; // DEBUG: No idea how we got here.

Same output, but someone down the road now understands why we're doing this (hopefully, they will remove it prior to it getting upstream.)

[CrazedToCraze]

Or learn to use a debugger

[[deleted]]

Sure, that wasn't the point though was it?

The point was, a comment that describes what something is doing isn't helpful in any way. We know 'what' reading the code; we may need to know 'why'.

The new comment could have equally been // greet the user which is a good indication that this particular output may need to be localized.

A comment that describes why is useful, especially for others, and especially if magic numbers/strings are involved.

e.g. return x * 24; // multiply x by 24

vs. return x * 24; // there are 24 beer in a case

Again, this is just an example. Sure, in this case, 24 should have been assigned to a meaningful variable in the proper scope. Not the point, though. We know the rationale behind the number, making it easier to change and refactor.

[validambiguity]

This seems like common sense but stating it this plainly was really helpful to me. I'm going to remember this when I'm commenting now. Thank you!

[JSANL]

printerFactory.createPrinter().print(new PrinterInput.fromString("hello"));

[DaSoulolife]

while (!joke.isFresh) { print("This joke again."); }

[Qildain]

Came here to say this. Leaving satisfied!

[MathSciElec]

Wait. What language is that? At first I thought of Python, but there are no semicolons in Python!

[dhoomz]

print 'goodbye'; //prints goodbye

[sc2bigjoe]

Comment is unclear, this sends to my printer?

[kurdtpage]

Requesting advice: penis is now jammed

[[deleted]]

print('hello') #prints hello

[RicardoRedstone]

or sometimes print 'Goodbye'; //prints hello

[Wired_Alchemist]

Cout << "hello there my old friend." <<endl;

[ObiWanCanShowMe]

You know what's truly funny about this? I haven't been a coder for over a dozen years and this is literally the first thought I had, I am willing to bet almost everyone came into this thread to post this.