this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
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[–] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 13 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I kind of get the idea that code should be self-documenting, but at the same time, there's so many crazy business rules that comments are basically a necessity if nothing else other than to explain why in the hell the crazed mess that provides the required functionality for the business rules exists.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 12 points 2 days ago

Yeah some comments are not useful

# returns the value as a string
return str(user.id)

Some comments are

# returns the user id as a string because ZenDesk's API throws errors if it gets a number.
# See ticket RA-1037
# See ZenDesk docs: https://etc/
return str(user.id)
[–] PonderingPotato@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's typically what people who advocate for less/no comments really mean. The code should self explain "what" it does, but if the "why" isn't obvious (i.e. confusing business logic) nobody argues that you shouldn't comment it. That's how I've worked in every company I've been at (and all developers around me) from 50 person start ups to >2k people. It's really common mentality with Ruby developers

[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Anyone complaining about commenting should be forced to code in assembly for a while.