Code comments

Posted on 2016-12-28 Updated on 2017-01-05

I read a blog post by Jeff Atwood some time ago (warning: this is an old post: https://blog.codinghorror.com/coding-without-comments/) that got me thinking about code comments again. I forget how I came across the blog post but it made me realise that I never, ever comment.

I used to think that comments were an essential part of software development because that’s what I was taught at university and, if I’m honest, they’re still a good idea for junior developers. I have found, though, that in most codebases comments are merely an excuse for poorly-written code. In fact, I would almost go so far as to say that the definition of well-written code is code that needs no comments.

I’d like to clear one thing up before we really begin: I’m talking about comments, not documentation. XML or JavaDoc comments for intellisense are fantastic–if done correctly–for documenting the public surface of your API. From now on when I use the word ‘comment’ I’m talking about double-slashed comments (// such as this) in the middle of a piece of code.

When do we see comments?

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Does null equal null?

Posted on 2016-12-21 Updated on 2016-12-23

There are few subjects in programming that are contentious enough to cause heated discussions whenever they come up in conversations, blog posts or Stack Overflow answers. The canonical example of one of these subjects is ‘tabs vs spaces’, but I’ve found another one. It’s something that you may not have thought about before (except occasionally when crafting a SQL query), so let me introduce today’s topic: Does null equal null?

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