When to comment that code

My software tends to have a surprisingly low number of comments. One of my projects, scdoc, has 25 comments among its 1,133 lines of C code, or 2%, compared to the average of 19%.1 Naturally, I insist that my code is well-written in spite of this divergence from the norm. Allow me to explain. The philosophy and implementation of code comments varies widely in the industry, and some view comment density as a proxy for code quality.2 I’ll state my views here, but will note that yours may differ an...

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