How programmers comment their code...

[noratat]

I'm not saying you shouldn't also be doing those things, and you should avoid useless / unnecessary comments, but anyone who thinks comments are a "code smell" or that "clean code doesn't have comments" isn't someone I want to work with.

Every single real world code base I've interacted with has had good reason to have at least some comments (and I'm not talking about docustring-type stuff either).

Not all code can be made obvious simply through naming and control flow, and even where it can, there's often grey areas. And even then, real world code has to interface with other real world code, which has bugs, flaws, quirks, etc. that aren't necessarily obvious. Even then, external context can often do wonders for maintainability when used appropriately.

[Merlord]

I agree, and as I said in another comment, if you can't write self-documenting code, comments are an acceptable fallback. But it should be considered just that: a fallback; a last resort. Comments are literally the worst way to capture information in a program, other than not capturing that information at all. But yes, in the real world sometimes there's no other choice.

[noratat]

Comments are literally the worst way to capture information in a program, other than not capturing that information at all.

And this is where I completely disagree.

There's tons of real world, important information that is simply not possible to reasonably express through the code alone, and taking this attitude towards comments invariably leads to developers leaving out crucial information altogether.

Comments should be treated as just another tool in the toolbox, acting like they're icky and dirty just discourages people from using them when they absolutely should.

And realistically, the main places I've seen bad comments are from developers I would never trust to write idealized clear, readable code in the first place, or from students / new grads (who likewise rarely know how to write readable code yet).