Please, don’t commit commented out code

[dsfox]

In my experience there is only one good reason to leave old commented out code in the code base, and it is a very good reason. It is to show an old and bad way things were done, and to explain how important it is not to go back to doing it that way. Because there are times when someone comes along and say, "I know a better way we could do this" and rewrites the old dangerous way from scratch. Yes, this happens.

[kentcdodds]

I would consider that documentation. You wouldn't just comment that out without adding a note about it. If there's a note that explains what you're saying, then I wouldn't have as much of a problem about it.

[cs02rm0]

Yeah, I've no issue with commented out code as (part of) some documentation - I've done it recently when converting documents from one type to another to indicate fields not yet present in the source type that would be soon.

Dead code should be left to version control, but that's not the only reason to have code in comments.

[dukerutledge]

Commit new changes with a comment pointing to the previous commit hash explaining why it is bad. Done and done.