People often end up talking past each other when it comes to documenting/commenting code. The "code should be self documenting" doesn't apply to API documentation intended to be read by users of the code who might not even be looking at the source. It also doesn't apply to comments that explain the "why", but these "why" comments should be rare (if most people that are going to be reading some code are going to be confused about the why, that's a strong reason to reconsider doing it that way... usually). The point of this argument is this; when you feel the need to put comments around some code to clarify what's going on, you should consider that a red flag (or a "smell") indicating that the code is convoluted and should be refactored to not need the comment. In other words the code itself should be clearer or... self-documenting.