useless comments (was Re: ActiveState going the wrong way)

[Alex Martelli]

"Maniac" <Maniac at alltel.net> wrote in message
news:45m0b9.fem.ln at alltel.net...
    [snip]
> I have yet to find a "useless" comment. Any documentation in source code

Have you TRULY never seen such beauties as

    x++;    // increment x by one

???!!!  Then you must have been privileged to never work
with programming newbies -- teaching them WHY such
comments are useless (and, in fact, WORSE than useless)
is an important part of their initiation.

I recommend section 1.6 of Kernighan and Pike's classic
"The Practice of Programming" for a concise exposition
of this issue.


Alex