Survey Results

View all surveys | Suggest a survey  

Do you comment your code?

Survey period: 5 May 2014 to 12 May 2014

A repeat of our survey from 4 years ago. Let's see how things have changed.

Option	Votes	%
I add comment headers for all public classes, objects and methods, events, fields etc	567	40.04
I add comment headers for all non-public classes, objects and methods, as well as non-obvious logic inside these	372	26.27
I provide comments at the top of files	299	21.12
I comment any code that may be obscure (the "what") to a reader	881	62.22
I comment any code where the purpose (the "why") may be obscure	939	66.31
I comment on expected inputs, outputs and other results	277	19.56
I comment on exceptions, side effects or error codes	312	22.03
I comment on structures (loop endings, function endings etc)	169	11.94
I comment as a last resort when I can't make my code any clearer	363	25.64
I do not comment code.	89	6.29
Responses	1,416
Respondents were allowed to choose more than one answer; totals may not add up to 100%

FirstPrev Next

Re: "Why" is really important than "What"...! Thanks78724-May-14 19:22 Thanks7872 4-May-14 19:22  Code is what computers understand and comment is what human can understand. Requirement and coding are some thing different. We can not identify code on the basis of requirement. Comment is meant to quickly explain your code [And to reduce 15mins into 15secs.. ] "When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly"- SoMad Re: "Why" is really important than "What"...! Maarten Kools4-May-14 23:07 Maarten Kools 4-May-14 23:07  The problem I have with commenting the "what" is that when making changes, you should also update the comments. If that fails to happen for whatever reason, the "what" comment is no longer explains the actual code. You're only going to find out when reviewing both the code and comment. Re: "Why" is really important than "What"...! Nemanja Trifunovic5-May-14 2:28 Nemanja Trifunovic 5-May-14 2:28  Rohan Leuva wrote: Code is what computers understand and comment is what human can understand *Machine* code is what computers understand. High level programming languages are designed for people. utf8-cpp

Last Visit: 31-Dec-99 18:00     Last Update: 19-Apr-24 7:54 Refresh ᐊ Prev123

General    News    Suggestion    Question    Bug    Answer    Joke    Praise    Rant    Admin   

Use Ctrl+Left/Right to switch messages, Ctrl+Up/Down to switch threads, Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right to switch pages.