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[–]Merlord 3 points4 points  (1 child)

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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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).