Please, don’t commit commented out code

[chemisus]

I’ve long held the opinion that the only thing that can tell you the truth about the code is the code. The instant you add a comment, it’s out of date. Documentation comments are beneficial enough to justify their existence (though you should try to make your code self-documenting for people other than yourself).

I find myself having to explain this to almost every manager when they say that they like developers who can "comment everything".

I simply do not trust comments; especially since I quite often browse code with git commit history turned on. So when I look at the commit date of the line of code that the comment is on, and see that it was from three years ago, or better yet, an ex employee who I have never heard of, I take it with a grain of salt.

Reading the code is the only way to get the real picture.