BLOGYoure commenting your code too much and other controversial thoughts on documentation by Bennett Garner

The other great use-case of comments is quickly disabling one or multiple lines of code. Comments make code more readable and understandable. This is especially useful if you work on a large team The links between human error diversity and software diversity: Implications for fault diversity seeking with lots of people. Every comment you write could save you and your colleagues some back and forth on slack. Some languages support a documentation tools, see javadocs, that can be useful.

Function simpleOkayCodeComment()
//some kind of code goes here
Also, did you notice what we did in that example? We not only gave the warning to future devs, but included a placeholder comment in the middle of a function. Because source code comments are ignored, you can use them to keep placeholder text in the file . There are many stylistic alternatives available when considering how comments should appear in source code.

The flexibility provided by comments allows for a wide degree of variability, but formal conventions for their use are commonly part of programming style guides. Some say that PWA vs Native Apps and Hybrid apps: pros and cons if a piece of code is written well, we can do away with comments altogether because that code’s purpose will be obvious. As John Ousterhout says, this is a delicious myth.

These harm code quality and velocity, particularly when it happens routinely. It’s often possible to refactor complex code to the point where adding explanatory comments becomes unnecessary. One technique for doing this that I find myself using all the time is variable extraction. This means replacing chunks of complex code with variables named to describe what those chunks are doing.

The formatting is consistent with Sun Microsystems Javadoc standards. The comment is designed to be read by the Javadoc processor. In this classic early BASIC code fragment the REM (“Remark”) keyword is used to add comments. The following code fragment is a simple ASCII diagram depicting the process flow for a system administration script contained in a Windows Script File running under Windows Script Host. If this type of comment is left in, it simplifies the review process by allowing a direct comparison of the code with the intended results.

If you’re anything like most engineers, it’s safe to say this happens to you a lot. If the variable animal is equal to 2, dog() is executed. If it’s equal to 1, cat() is executed, but dog() is executed as well. This is because there’s no break statement at the end of case 1, so that case falls through to the next one. Serve as a reminder to change something in the future. Notice how the comment on the first line describes the line of code below it.

Code Commenting Syntax

It’s a simple method to manage your work and remind us of unfinished tasks. Article The 3 Best VS Code Extensions to Handle TODOs As software engineers, we use TODOs and FIXMEs all the time. We’ve picked out the three best Visual Studio Code extensions to help you handle them. Tools like Stepsize can clean up TODOs and manage issues3.

• Imagine a room full of people shouting advice at you – even if the advice is solid, too much of it at once causes you to miss most of it.
• It’s also about knowing when not to – and what to do instead.
• The tool will also surface TODOs in PRs, where you can turn them into issues.
• But comments aren’t the only way to explain your code.

It’s good to mention that commenting each single line of code, does the contrary of helping to understand the code. In MATLAB’s programming language, the ‘%’ character indicates a single-line comment. Multi line comments are also available via % brackets and can be nested, e.g. These bad comment practices are a direct path to spiralling tech debt and declining code quality. Code commenting is the practice of sprinkling short, normally single-line notes throughout your code. They explain how your program works, and your intentions behind it.

But your comments should still obey whatever line limit you agree upon with your team [or by yourself if you’re working alone]. Comments are employed to notify, warn, and remind others that didn’t write the code of important things that the code is doing. In this article, we are going to be focusing on writing comments in Python. The comment is nice, and relatively harmless on its own, but it’s unnecessary. As the code base grows, little comments like that add up.

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This avoids accumulating serious tech debt that can be hard to pay back. If you’re not already using a tool for this, try Jira or Linear for app-based issue tracking. Or, try Stepsize to track and manage tech debt from your code editor. Don’t comment on what exactly you’re doing including every little detail, but explain why. It’s best to do this as you’re coding it , because then it’s still fresh in your mind.

Most coders would chuckle and move on, ignoring the code smell. I have seen this happen before, especially in open-source projects that weren’t moderated terribly well. Someone will find a less-than-stellar snippet of code and use a comment to denegrate the author. The primary ones being that you’re not always going to be the one working on the project, and you can’t guarantee how experienced the next person will be.

For a detailed review, please consult the programming language comparison article. Programmers may use informal tags in comments to assist in indexing common issues. They may then be able After Failed Binance Deal, FTX Will Try to Raise Funds, Sam Bankman-Fried Says to be searched for with common programming tools, such as the Unix grep utility or even syntax-highlighted within text editors. These are sometimes referred to as “codetags” or “tokens”.

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These may include insert positions for automatic header file inclusion, commands to set the file’s syntax highlighting mode, or the file’s revision number. These functional control comments are also commonly referred to as annotations. Some programming languages support block comments.

These are comments which span multiple lines of code . If you want to comment out multiple lines of code within the same comment, this is what you’re looking for. On the other hand, when we don’t embrace good practices, code comments can have the opposite effect. After all, code comments are an unstructured way of storing information. They’re not easily searchable or visible beyond looking at the code. This makes them a poor alternative for proper documentation or issue tracking.

Why Code Comments Are Bad?

This C code fragment demonstrates the use of a prologue comment or “block comment” to describe the purpose of a conditional statement. The comment explains key terms and concepts, and includes a short signature by the programmer who authored the code. Typographic conventions to specify comments vary widely. Further, individual programming languages sometimes provide unique variants.

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There is a fine line with these between doing it right, going overboard, or being too sparing with them. It’s a balance you have to just learn over time, but there are some pretty good rules of thumb to consider. Experts have varying viewpoints on whether, and when, comments are appropriate in source code.

Docstring, a specific type of comment that is parsed and retained throughout the runtime of the program. Alternatively, a comment format syntax identical to the “block comment” style used in the syntax for C and Java is supported by Transact-SQL, MySQL, SQLite, PostgreSQL, and Oracle. Inline comments in Ruby start with the # character. # This is a Unix-style inline comment, which starts with ‘#’. In the first example, the –[[ in the first line starts a long comment, and the two hyphens in the last line are still inside that comment.