Reducing technical debt by valuing comments as much as code

Re:Reducing technical debt by valuing comments as much as code by vkou on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @11:00PM (#34606176)

You don't need to be at 100% to be better than some comments.

Mind you, no serious project is anywhere close to 100% coverage. It may have 100% unit-test coverage, but that is a far cry from 100% coverage.

And the valuable comments are the ones that describe integration interactions.

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Re:Reducing technical debt by valuing comments as much as code by lmm on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @11:47PM (#34606497)

No serious project is anywhere close to "100% comment coverage" either.

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Re:Reducing technical debt by valuing comments as much as code by vkou on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @01:20AM (#34607137)

I'm not pitching comments as a replacement for all tests, like some are pitching tests as a replacement for all comments.

I'm pitching comments as a compromise when the test that encodes their meaning is impractical.

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Re:Reducing technical debt by valuing comments as much as code by lmm on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @01:46AM (#34607285)

Combining tests and comments is still not going to get you to 100% coverage though. So for comments to be worthwhile the marginal gain from using them has to outweigh the cost. IME it's usually better to put that effort into better tests/tooling/etc..

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Re:Reducing technical debt by valuing comments as much as code by latchkey on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @10:35AM (#34611929)

I'm curious, who is pitching for that?

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