Code Comment Best Practices: What to Write and What to Leave Out
When to comment code and when not to. Best practices for inline comments, JSDoc/docstrings, TODO notes, and keeping comments in sync with code.
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Tags: text, writing, programming
Code Comments Best Practices: What to Comment, What to Skip Code comments are a hotly debated topic in software development. "Good code doesn't need comments" is one school of thought. "Comments explain intent" is another. The truth is more nuanced: the best comments explain things that the code cannot express — decisions, reasoning, and context that is invisible in the executable statements. Don't Comment Obvious Code Comments that duplicate what is obvious from the code create clutter that developers skip. Skipped comments train developers to ignore comments — including important ones. The bar for a comment: would a competent developer who has not seen this code before understand it in 5 seconds without the comment? If yes, skip the comment. --- Comments That Add Real Value Explaining a…
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