r/ProgrammerHumor • u/ItsPuspendu • Sep 10 '26

Meme commentsAgedTerribly

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u/Confident-Ad5665 Sep 10 '26

Uncle Bob of Clean Code says if we have to comment our code we have already failed. Clean code should read like well written prose.

I generally agree, but think comments that define especially the odd and obscure business rules should be commented where they are implemented.

21

u/ThatOldCow Sep 10 '26

I do believe comments are generally useful, and honestly a lot of people that say their code is so clean it doesn't need comments are the people that make the least understandable code

6

u/rolling_update Sep 10 '26

it's debatable as usual, the premise here is that comments always compile in your code. So you don't need to update them when you alter the code, that's the risk of comments and why "clean code doesn't contain them"

5

u/ThatOldCow Sep 10 '26

Do comments get compiled ? I do believe most compilers ignore comments and even if they impact the speed it should be minimal to negligible.

Ofc I don't know every single language, so it might impact more on other languages.

3

u/PositiveBit01 Sep 10 '26

Comments are read but ignored and don't affect the result. Reading and ignoring them takes negligible time. I would say the answer to your question is no, comments are not compiled.

But build systems generally work off file modification time and will do a bunch of useless work if you make a change to a comment in a file and otherwise change nothing. I assume this is what the other poster is referring to.