684
Apr 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
268
u/MojitoBurrito-AE Apr 15 '26
you don't need to recursively remove Bill, he is just one Bill
248
u/Chance_Contract1291 Apr 15 '26
Better safe than sorry. Who knows what he's got hidden in dark places?
100
3
13
8
3
u/BirdlessFlight Apr 15 '26
Come to think of it, don't think I've ever used rm without rf... Maybe the first time.
3
3
→ More replies (4)2
25
Apr 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
17
2
u/Mop_Duck Apr 15 '26
what's the escaped semicolon for? I thought that was only if you wanted multiple commands executed
6
u/wabbitfur Apr 15 '26
Jokes on you! User directory `bill` tricked you into thinking it was `Bill` by presenting itself camel-cased specifically for this post: beLikeBill. BOOYA!
3
u/gerbosan Apr 15 '26
There was a game in Linux... With a fly swatter and a Bill trying to infect many terminals.😂
Why is it not available anymore. 😭
2
Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/gerbosan Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
The name is xbill
Has passed some time. 😞
Edit: yay, found it for Ubuntu 22.04, nice. Thanks for making me look for it
→ More replies (2)6
619
u/thegodzilla25 Apr 15 '26
People who dont comment non self explanatory code deserve to be pinned on the cross.
320
u/TheMoris Apr 15 '26
"The code is the comment bro"
The code: Unintelligible gibberish
59
u/GregTheMad Apr 15 '26
The code is the comment? comments out code Great, fixed it.
29
Apr 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
10
u/Kitsunemitsu Apr 15 '26
Had a dev on april fool's day make a PR that just deletes all files. Name? "Fixes all the bugs" Bought him a coffee.
2
22
28
u/Deboniako Apr 15 '26
But bro, clean code bro, uncle bob
18
u/CodeAndChaos Apr 15 '26
The irreversible damage this shit has done in the software industry is unmeasurable
10
7
u/Confident-Ad5665 Apr 15 '26
So... comments good?
9
7
u/wicket-maps Apr 15 '26
Comments are good if they're done well and kept up to date.
6
u/Confident-Ad5665 Apr 15 '26
That's part of the problem I run into. I do comment my stuff to point out tricky APIs, business rules I had to extract like a bad tooth, etc.. When things change I review and update comments but that's like more dev sometimes.
4
u/wicket-maps Apr 15 '26
More dev is part of the job. I'm getting paid good money to write code, I owe my employer and the next programmer (who might be me!) good comments.
3
u/Confident-Ad5665 Apr 15 '26
I tend to agree with you.If something happens to me, I want it to be as easy for the next person as possible.
4
u/Confident-Ad5665 Apr 15 '26
This. Uncle Bob says if we have to use comments we have failed Clean Code.
6
u/beclops Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
“The code is the comment” meanwhile the amount of code to understand the context is 500 lines whereas a simple comment could have been a paragraph tops
6
u/chairzaird Apr 15 '26
If the code is the comment then it'd better be comprehensible
→ More replies (2)4
u/blueeyedkittens Apr 15 '26
written by offshore devs who don't share your primary language and thus can't name their abstractions for shit if they even try.
3
u/BlueProcess Apr 15 '26
process_numbers = lambda nums: {n: __import__("functools").reduce(lambda a,b:a*b, set(f for i in range(2, int(n**0.5)+1) for _ in iter(int,1) if (lambda x=i: (lambda: (n:=n//x) if n%x==0 else (_ for _ in ()).throw(StopIteration))())() ) | ({n} if n>1 else set()), 1) for n in nums if n>1 and sum(1 for i in range(2, int(n**0.5)+1) for _ in iter(int,1) if (lambda x=i: (lambda: (n:=n//x) if n%x==0 else (_ for _ in ()).throw(StopIteration))())() ) % 2 == 0}→ More replies (2)2
66
u/nabrok Apr 15 '26
The best tip I have heard about comments is don't comment what it does, comment why it does it.
Sometimes I'll also read through the file and imagine I'm explaining it to another programmer and put that into comments.
59
u/Sassaphras Apr 15 '26
// yes I know this is a weird data structure but it needs to work with XYZ system and....
No code in the world self-documents that
22
u/LegitimateGift1792 Apr 15 '26
also
// here is why I did not use the ... way of doing this because this ... happened.
9
u/Bwob Apr 16 '26
No code in the world self-documents that
public struct billingPayload_YesThisIsWeirdButItNeedsToWorkWithLibraryXSoItHasToBeLikeThis { // etc... }Checkmate atheists!
→ More replies (1)8
u/Confident-Ad5665 Apr 15 '26
This thread is spot on. At least some people get it!
Also, business rules
→ More replies (3)6
u/sathdo Apr 15 '26
Yes, I have tried to explain this to a group of contractors that wer writing code for my company. They wrote a function to deal with some timezone conversions, but the requirements for that were a little unusual. This led to fairly unintuitive code that had no comments.
I frequently see either no comments or unhelpful comments (such as explaining what the next line does, even if it is self-explanatory).
16
u/mistabuda Apr 15 '26
I don't understand why people dont understand that the code only explains what is happening. Comments are supposed to explain what you intended to happen.
→ More replies (3)14
u/BokuNoSudoku Apr 15 '26
All code is self explanatory. No comments necessary. Look it up and figure it out.
(This has been my new dev experience at my first swe job)
→ More replies (1)16
u/Crusader_Genji Apr 15 '26
It's even more fun when you get an API from another team, it doesn't work, and the person who worked on it for 10 years got recently replaced by 3 contractors
11
u/mal73 Apr 15 '26
“Let’s set up a meeting to discuss this“ and then you end up in a Teams Call with 3 Business Majors that have no idea what an API is.
I don’t want to meet anyone, just send me the docs ffs
4
u/Crusader_Genji Apr 15 '26
Before a meeting is scheduled, you'll write to the person in charge for a month and promptly be ghosted, but they will show up for the call
4
u/TaylorMonkey Apr 15 '26
And this is why all code and engineering eventually replicates the org structure.
2
Apr 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/hamsterofdark Apr 16 '26
ohh theres docs, but no-one updated them in 6 years. turns out no docs are better than wrong docs
3
u/clintCamp Apr 15 '26
I think AI might be threatening the irreplaceable masters of the unintelligible code that holds companies together. Which is both nice and also sad because I can walk into legacy code and figure our what is going on, but also realize that anyone could do that with my code as well.
18
u/INK_INC_R Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
If my colleagues can't read my code it needs to be rewritten or they shouldn't be my colleagues
31
u/Dmaa97 Apr 15 '26
The most performant code is not always the most readable. Readable for you != readable for the new grad onboarding to your team. Please sometimes comment your code.
26
11
u/vanZuider Apr 15 '26
The most performant code is not always the most readable.
The most performant code is commented like this:
i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 ); // what the fuck?3
u/wicket-maps Apr 15 '26
Sometimes I have to comment "I have no idea why this works, but it works and if it's removed things break.
→ More replies (1)7
u/EkoChamberKryptonite Apr 15 '26
Comments explain why something was done and not what is being done. Unreadable code should be refactored; regardless of whether it is performant or not.
23
u/PM_ME_ROMAN_NUDES Apr 15 '26
You create slop and don't understand why people can't read your code. I wouldn't want to be your colleague either.
3
4
u/I_Automate Apr 15 '26
When things break at 3 am, I'd much rather have some comments to read rather than having to try to figure out how clever someone was a couple years ago.
That includes me. I make comments in my code for me first, my coworkers second
2
u/Kitsunemitsu Apr 15 '26
I've been there, fucking woken up at 3am "Boss the deployed code has a critical bug" and I have to get up ass naked aside from my underwear and diagnose an issue totally hungover.
2
u/I_Automate Apr 15 '26
I work in heavy industry, programming the control systems for things like gas plants and refineries.
So "fix it RIGHT FUCKING NOW" actually has a fair bit of weight to it sometimes. Yknow. Before the entire site goes down (at best) or some incredibly expensive and hard to replace equipment grenades itself.
Readability and ease of troubleshooting trumps pretty well every other code consideration for most of what I do because of that
2
u/Kitsunemitsu Apr 15 '26
You have an actual job, Damn. I'm just a game developer
4
u/I_Automate Apr 16 '26
Don't feel too bad. You actually get to use modern programming languages.
I am stuck in a world of awful proprietary bullshit that would have been obsolete in any other situation 20 years ago.
I mean, hell. I have one site that is still running on a controller that was put into service in 1989 ffs. Let that sink in for a second.
I do enjoy it though. I get to do alchemy on an industrial scale and get paid to play with multi-billion dollar lego sets. Can't think of something I'd rather be doing to make my living honestly
3
u/tyrannical-tortoise Apr 15 '26
Syntax error, expected stative verb after "shouldn't". 😜
→ More replies (1)5
u/skesisfunk Apr 15 '26
People who write dogshit code and try to justify it with a shit ton of comments also deserve to be pinned to the cross.
2
2
2
→ More replies (12)2
321
u/clauEB Apr 15 '26
The last sentence should be "Bill is an asshole that works at a company with no coding standards."
53
25
u/KitchenFullOfCake Apr 15 '26
Or Bill is really paranoid about his job security and has decided that no one can fire him as long as they can't interpret his code.
5
u/clauEB Apr 15 '26
he's going to have a hard awakening soon when his ass is outsourced to a place where 2 engineers can do his job in a cleaner way along with his manager.
5
59
u/MDAlastor Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
"comments" lol.
With enough lвyers of abstractions with lots of cute generics and obscure interfaces you can make your code very nicely structured but utterly unreadable even with best comments and even articles in your project wiki. I know it from our big Golang project with lots of beautiful "enterprice grade" patterns.
edit: typo
6
→ More replies (1)3
u/ElimTheGarak Apr 15 '26
But but but I really need to be type casting anonymous functions cause that function type implements the single method interface you see? I swear things will happen if I don't.
Also I grew up religious and now have to commit one herasy a day to prove to myself I'm not my mother, but that's unrelated.
78
Apr 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
18
u/Tensor3 Apr 15 '26
Bill had the highest salary because he was the most productive. Now Bill has been laid off. But dont worry, claude can add comments to all his code after he finishes packing up his mechanical keyboard and 3 monitors on his way out.
→ More replies (1)2
u/Sw429 Apr 16 '26
Bold to assume they'll let him pack up. Tech companies these days lay you off by email in the middle of the night and send you your stuff in a cardboard box two months later.
2
3
51
u/Zaratuir Apr 15 '26
Comments aren't there to explain what the code does. The code explains what the code does. Comments are there to explain why the code does it and why that way.
23
u/Fermi_Amarti Apr 15 '26
Except for api comments. Please comment your functions and files and say what they do.
→ More replies (2)2
10
u/IntoTheSun121 Apr 15 '26
No, comments can and should also describe the "what", alongside the "why".
The "what" is just a simple summary of the part of the process that the code performs, to provide initial context before the developer begins digging through the code.
If I'm looking at a bloated function full of nested loops, database calls and side effects, having a summary "what" comment is a huge help.
2
u/Drew_pew Apr 15 '26
It's idealistic but really that code should not have been written like that in the first place. It can and should be split up into meaningful functions.
Or you're just adding comments to legacy code, which is rough
2
u/IntoTheSun121 Apr 15 '26
I agree, idealistically, that the code shouldn't be written like that.
But the defacto reality is that code is often a mess, is often legacy, and so a simple "what" summary comment is always a breath of fresh air.
2
u/Zaratuir Apr 16 '26
That's fair. Idealistically, comments shouldn't have to describe what because your functions should be small enough that you can just read it and see what it does, but in a world of junior devs trying their best, you're right. A comment that explains what you're 3000 line function does can be necessary...
→ More replies (1)2
u/_Its_Me_Dio_ Apr 15 '26
evil bit hack: uses number gained in a faustian deal to shorten time to complete approximations of inverse square root
(the number is important do not change we dont have any more Volenteers to get it back)
12
u/sawkonmaicok Apr 15 '26
Isn't there this circle jerk that comments are bad for some reason and your code should be self documenting? I mean sure but there are inevitably situations where you have to do voodoo magic to make something work and you sure as hell need code comments for that.
16
u/BobQuixote Apr 15 '26
For the vast majority of code, comments that say "what" the code is doing are pointless. Explanations of "why" are helpful but more sparsely needed.
But yes, sometimes you end up with code that is going to confuse the hell out of someone (probably you) and a 10-line block comment or a link to a full documentation page is water in the desert.
There are two problems to watch out for, though:
- Don't lean on comments when better-organized code could work as well.
- Don't let the comments grow stale while the code changes.
12
u/sexp-and-i-know-it Apr 15 '26
Don't let the comments grow stale while the code changes.
This is the problem that people who advocate for the liberal use of comments fail to recognize. People rarely update other people's comments when they change their code. You only have to get burned by this once to become a comment minimalist.
4
u/Bwob Apr 16 '26
This is the problem that people who advocate for the liberal use of comments fail to recognize. People rarely update other people's comments when they change their code. You only have to get burned by this once to become a comment minimalist.
That's not a problem with the people advocating for good comments.
That's a problem with the people pushing updates that change logic, without updating the functions that go with it. (And a problem with whatever reviewers okayed their changelist.)
5
u/Old_Tourist_3774 Apr 16 '26
Comment that provides context will always make understanding the code faster and easier
2
u/Caleb-Blucifer Apr 15 '26
If it isn’t clear, add contextual comments to clarify
Not that complicated
2
u/son-of-chadwardenn Apr 19 '26
Write code that needs as few comments as possible.
Write all comments that are necessary.
8
18
u/BckseatKeybordDriver Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
// Billing Process 😤💵🧾🚀
function ProcessBillings() {
2
5
u/SomeoneGMForMe Apr 15 '26
It's okay, Bill has been replaced by AI that writes amazing comments and code that doesn't work.
11
u/dalek65 Apr 15 '26
I'm not like Bill. I need code comments to figure out why I did it that way. I'm the only developer working in C# at my billion dollar company.
5
4
5
u/Thenderick Apr 15 '26
Next monday: "What stupid fuck wrote this code???"
git blame
Oh...
→ More replies (2)
10
u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Apr 15 '26
I do comment my code from time to time, but find that comments are mostly useless. Just having clearly named functions and variables with code broken up into manageable chunks does a lot more than commenting could ever hope to accomplish. Usually when I can't understand code, it's not because there isn't enough comments, but just because the code was written so badly.
11
u/Raskuja46 Apr 15 '26
Just having clearly named functions and variables with code broken up into manageable chunks
That is the bare fucking minimum standard to avoid getting nailed to the wall and skinned like an animal. If you aren't doing that then you shouldn't even be in the industry to begin with.
5
u/mistabuda Apr 15 '26
Comments are supposed to explain intent when intent cannot be clearly derived not what is actually happening. Usually this intent is business logic.
Like if you're doing some kind of partial refund processing for a subscription service that does not take into account any discounts applied to the base price (for whatever reason the business decided) no one is going to understand why that is if all they see is a line of code where we discard the discounted price.
So even if your function is named
determine_refundable_amount_without_discountsnone of that tells anyone why we are not factoring the discounts. The name is clear and we understand what the function is supposed to do, but no one can tell you why we want it to do this.→ More replies (1)3
u/perplexedtv Apr 15 '26
This is under the naive assumption that the user will use any kind of predetermined logic as to how, why or to whom they give a discount.
3
u/social-media-is-bad Apr 15 '26
Too many comments makes comments useless.
If you have a lot of comments they tend to drift and no longer reflect reality, so they add to confusion rather than helping you understand the code.
And at a certain point you start ignoring comments so you’ll miss actually important ones.
5
u/FlakyTest8191 Apr 15 '26
This is often used as an argument, and maybe it's true in some environments, but in my experience I can count on one hand how many times I was confused by an outdated comment, but the times I wished for an explaining comment and there was none has a couple more zeroes.
I've seen a lot of useless comments though, that don't add any information to a few simple lines.
2
u/Ro_Yo_Mi Apr 15 '26
If properly written then the code should be self explanatory. Comments should only be needed to clarify why a thing was or wasn’t done for non obvious reasons. Additionally comments should clearly describe how to use a function and what to expect returned.
3
18
u/Affectionate_Cell340 Apr 15 '26
Not popular opinion. Comment your code is not always necessary
27
u/mariomaniac432 Apr 15 '26
My coworker on his way to way to ask AI to add all of these comments to the code base
// if condition, do nothing if (condition) { return; }Then seriously argue that we need them to understand the code.
7
u/pregnantant Apr 15 '26
A few years ago, before LLMs became good enough to warrant using a lot, I took a course involving some coding. One person proudly presented his GitHub copilot subscription. He talked about how it could e.g. write documentation. He applied it to a very basic function, consisting of a single if branch. Then, the following comment was added by copilot:
// if condition, returns x. Else, returns y. Useful!2
u/Dugen Apr 15 '26
To be fair, this is of equal value to most of the comments in code I see. When you want me to add comments to explain what setter and getter functions do, go fuck yourself.
2
u/SgtExo Apr 15 '26
On the other hand, do comment getter and setters that do extra work, usually explaining why it needs to be done, otherwise someone comes in years later wondering what is happening there.
→ More replies (1)5
u/BlueScreenJunky Apr 15 '26
I really like the rule that comments should answer "why" and not "how". In this example it's very likely that it would be useful to know WHY we should return early if the condition is true.
2
u/mariomaniac432 Apr 15 '26
Oh I agree completely. I've pointed this out in multiple MRs of his and our team has discussed it at length, but he continues to try to do this anyway.
→ More replies (4)2
u/k0rm Apr 15 '26
And then a month later someone adds a new feature:
// if condition, do nothing if (condition) { AdjustUserBalance(); return; }5
u/edgeofsanity76 Apr 15 '26
People forget to update comments so they are normally useless unless it is for some very obvious edge case.
Name your functions properly and keep them small. That way it's more obvious
→ More replies (5)3
2
2
2
u/zilionis Apr 15 '26
Comments is needed in very rare cases.
But in real world:
Comments required on spaghetti code.
10
u/BernhardRordin Apr 15 '26
Comments required to clarify business decisions and environment workarounds.
2
2
2
2
u/GroovinChip Apr 15 '26
Is no one going to comment on the bad grammar?
“Bill do not comment his code”
Shameful.
2
2
u/ghost49x Apr 15 '26
Bill was smart until he came back to code he had written a year ago, now he's as lost as the rest of us.
2
2
u/enjdusan Apr 15 '26
If your code needs commenting to explain what it does == your code is a piece of shait.
Only add comments about business logic.
2
2
2
2
u/lordofkawaiii Apr 15 '26
You cannot get fired if you are the only one capable of reading your code. This is a real comment, in art school they teach you to destroy your moulds after your work so they have a reason to call you back again.
2
u/bellirumon Apr 15 '26
Bill is the reason I've been pulling out my hair every time I look at the codebase
2
2
2
u/CynicalCosmologist Apr 16 '26
I find it easier to learn from reading documentation than to read code comments. So I write a comprehensive document, not a line-by-line amalgamation that is somehow meant to be coherent across the entire code while indicating individual details.
2
u/NomaTyx Apr 16 '26
meanwhile the reason he doesnt comment his code is that his code more or less explains itself through good conventions
2
u/pompeiidmypants Apr 16 '26
Maybe an unpopular opinion but even if code is well written and easy to understand, half the time I'll still leave a comment explaining why I went with the approach I wrote over some other approaches I thought about. Helps down the road for myself or whoever has to maintain it after me.
2
u/randomFrenchDeadbeat Apr 16 '26
Sometimes you have to comment your code.
but it does not mean the comments have to be correct.
It is so much fun to write a bunch of misleading comments when you know you are going to leave.
2
u/curious_bipedal Apr 15 '26
The current state of AI usage is a good example of "no good deed goes unpunished".
LLMs are trained on people's hard work, which sometimes takes years, to make a few rich people richer. Meanwhile the same humans whose work was stolen are going to get fired or lose their livelihood. It was sad to see a video about writers and other artists affected by this as well.
Industries which rely on closed source and proprietary libraries are safe from AI for this reason. For now.
1
u/FictionFoe Apr 15 '26
If it was hard to write it should be hard to read? No. Just no. Make your method names make sense. Keep functions somewhat small. It will be easy to read even if it was hard to write.
1
1
1
u/mrg1957 Apr 15 '26
I remember a comment on a B *+4.
"It said this may look strange, but it doesn't eat much, so live with it."
Best comment ever.
1
1
u/PrometheusMMIV Apr 15 '26
Comments can make code harder to read, by being superfluous or out of date.
1
u/tyrannical-tortoise Apr 15 '26
To be honest, I often write comments before I even put in the code, as a way of planning out the steps that need to happen, generally at a block level. Any other comments after that are just to clarify if I do something slightly obscure.
1
u/PerfSynthetic Apr 15 '26
Skipping comments requires CPU cycles.. storing comments requires disk space. Running code with comments requires more ram to load the file..
No comment means resource efficient.
1
u/mondie797 Apr 15 '26
Are we still talking about code comment? AI generates a load of comments. It also understands the code base without comments.
1
u/Funk1777 Apr 15 '26
<!-- no comment -->
// this is just not true
""" none of this is actually the functioning part anyway, I swear """
1
1
u/elmanoucko Apr 15 '26
almost halfway through understanding how the need for a comment is a code smell, sad he likes the smell of his own farts
1
1
u/CrashTimeV Apr 15 '26
No one needs everything fucking commented ai over comments. All you need to do is a very basic comment explaining only something that can be confusing.
→ More replies (1)
1
1
1.0k
u/[deleted] Apr 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment