As I say on my home node, behind the scenes the two of us were engaging in much more friendly chatter. But still the discussion at Re (tilly) 2 (disagree): Another commenting question, has a lot to say about commenting style.

As for your specific point, if a function will have many arguments, I make the arguments to the function a hash. Should I need to fundamentally change what a function that is part of a public API does, I write a new function, gut the old and make it a wrapper around the real function. Or vice versa. Plus I make my functions small and simple. If they do something simple and clear, then I find that they do not find themselves in need of great amounts of editing later.