4 Reasons Why We Need Code Comments
Why do we need code comments? I would not be surprised if your first answer is, “We don’t.”
I get it. Senior developer after senior developer has taught us that “comments are bad.” And we cheerfully nod our heads, saying, “I am smarter for not using them.” We grin smugly when we see one of our juniors make the “mistake” of using comments in their code.
But as much as we sometimes abuse them, we still need comments.
I know comments don’t affect the code’s behavior. I understand how they can get stale and stop making sense. I am all for writing clean code, and I do my best to ensure my variables, methods, and class names describe their intent as accurately as possible. If I see dead code lying around in the comments for a while, I delete it.
But here is the bottom line: we need code comments because there are some things they do better than plain code. Here’s why.