I strive to write self documenting code, but I also like to fill in with helpful comments. When I use a code snippet that I had to look up, I usually put a comment in explaining it. This leads to the funny situation of going back to maintain a bit of code written months prior, and finding comments like, "@_ is the input array to the subroutine" just before a line like "my ( $name, $rank, $serialnumber ) = @_;". I didn't know that when I wrote it, but I do now. Someone new to perl will appreciate that line when they have to work on the code, but an old timer would think it was written by an idiot. (No, not an idiot. A newbie... but sometimes we mistake ignorance for idiocy)

But yes, writting self documenting code is very important. Thats why I use constant.pm instead of writing the routines myself and why I didn't use a regex in my answer to One for the regexp fans