Please let me know: too much commenting for your taste?

Too much. I tend to be rather minimalistic with commentary, having been burned too many times by commentary that differed from the code that it was purporting to describe. It's way to easy to invest time in writing grand commentary that

Code is truth. I'd rather invest time in making the code readable.

One way that the tendency to overcomment lulls people into sin is with subroutine names. There's a great temptation to leave a subroutine poorly named, thinking "oh, well. we'll explain it in the commentary." Poor move.

An example 

  # NAME
  #        dump_subtable() - dump a subtable

[download]
If the commentary merely repeats the name, the commentary is wasted. If more commentary is needed, it is a strong hint that the subroutine either needs to be renamed or refactored. Worse is when the commentary lies (usually by omission).

In reply to Re: Am I over-commenting my code? by dws
in thread Am I over-commenting my code? by belden

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