Over-Commented Code

Posted on 27 June, 2006 by maximinus in Rant

So maybe I find code of many forms easier to understand than some people.  But whether I do or not, I find that some people have the tendency to oversaturate their code with pointless comments - like this one from some sample code written by my Java tutor:

if(menuSelection.equals("Create")) { // sent by the 'create' menu item

Now, if that isn't redundant commenting of perfectly self-documenting code, I don't know what is.  Anybody who can't decipher that line of code should not be touching any code written in any language.  That line is practically the epitome of self-documenting, readable code - if you can't read it, you're certainly not qualified to be touching any Java code (and almost certainly not any type of code).

Edit: Here's another gem I've spotted:

WriteDataBaseToDisk();  // write it to disk

Here we have a comment which is *less* informative/descriptive than the code.  What is this "it" that we are writing to disk?  This was by no means the only such uninformative comment...

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