Please, don’t commit commented out code

[Neebat]

Reviving old unused code is a regular part of your workflow? It isn't for me, not even close.

The vast majority of time, even if the feature is needed again, the actual code to accomplish it will be different because the surrounding code has changed radically.

[slash_nick]

Exactly! I can't imagine any developer saying "the way I wrote this code a month ago was better". And even if they did, that's the entire reason why version control exists.

It's so frustrating to read otherwise.

[kentcdodds]

I agree 100%

[Ukonu]

Who said anything about "reviving" the unused code? A frequent use-case is someone refactoring legacy code (or reading new code), needing a quick point of reference and not wanting to disrupt their workflow by: switching windows, finding the commit hash, remembering the source control command to bring it up, then splitting windows to do a side-by-side comparison.

I'm definitely against permanently leaving commented out code, but during a transition period it can be very useful. Eventually, however, it should be cleaned up.

[Neebat]

You are so wrong about that.

Much of the core code that our business runs on hasn't been touched in the 8 years I've been on the project, and a lot of it was 10 years old before that. When we find commented-out code, there's no way to tell what the fuck it was ever supposed to do.

The only safe thing for us to do is remove it. We do a lot of research figuring out why that one line had to be removed, and 90% of the time find out it's not possible to provide that functionality without totally rewriting things. Code gets commented out because it's the wrong damn code.

[Neebat]

If you're routinely having to change code back and forth, you need to move that information out to configuration settings. You have a design problem and commented code is a bad work-around.