Comments Memes

COBOL assignments are already punishment enough without the professor's commentary. First they tell you to add comments, so you write "*> move A to B" which is literally just repeating what the code says in slightly different words. Then they hit you with the "explain WHY not WHAT" lecture, so you craft these beautiful explanatory comments about copying values around. The code went from self-documenting to over-documented faster than a mainframe processes a batch job. Nothing says "I understand good practices" quite like explaining why you're moving variables in a language where everything is already painfully verbose.

Ah yes, the classic "I'm doing this for the team" excuse when really you're just trying to remember what the hell that function does three hours from now. We all pretend we're being altruistic team players writing detailed comments and documentation, but deep down we know the truth: our memory is about as reliable as JavaScript's type system. You'll write a brilliant algorithm at 2 AM, feel like a genius, and then come back the next morning staring at your own code like it's written in ancient hieroglyphics. That's when you realize past-you was actually looking out for future-you, not the junior dev who might inherit this codebase. The real MVP is the comment that says "don't touch this, I don't know why it works either."

Coming back to code you wrote just two weeks ago and finding it completely incomprehensible is basically a rite of passage. The guy staring at Egyptian hieroglyphics on his screen? That's you trying to decode your own variable names like temp2_final_ACTUAL and wondering what possessed you to write a 47-line nested ternary operator. The real kicker is that two weeks ago, you were absolutely convinced your logic was crystal clear and didn't need comments because "the code documents itself." Spoiler alert: it doesn't. Future you is now sitting there like an archaeologist trying to understand an ancient civilization's thought process, except the ancient civilization is literally just past you being lazy about documentation. Pro tip: if you can't understand your own code after two weeks, imagine what your teammates will think. Comments aren't just for other people—they're love letters to your future self who has completely forgotten why that hacky workaround was "absolutely necessary."

The classic descent into legacy code hell! What starts as a bright-eyed "You got the job!" quickly spirals into the ninth circle of developer inferno. First, you discover there's "no documentation" (translation: we were too busy putting out fires to write any). Then the gut punch - zero comments in the codebase because apparently psychic abilities are an unwritten job requirement. The final horrors reveal themselves: cryptic three-letter variable names that would make a license plate proud (wtf, tmp, idx anyone?) and 2000+ line monolithic files that should have been refactored during the Obama administration. It's not debugging at this point - it's digital archaeology with a side of existential crisis.

The secret agent of technical debt! Just like James Bond leaves a trail of explosions behind him, this developer leaves a trail of production bugs. No comments, no documentation, and 7 critical issues that somehow made it past QA. The name's Code... Bad Code. Licensed to deploy straight to production without peer review.

Looking at your two-week-old code like it's an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph that needs a Rosetta Stone to decipher. The transformation from "this is so elegant and efficient" to "who wrote this archaeological artifact and why are there zero comments?" happens at approximately 336 hours after commit. The worst part? That indecipherable spaghetti monster came from YOUR brain, and future-you is silently judging past-you's life choices while frantically searching Stack Overflow for clues about your own logic.

Left side: "My code is self-documenting!!" with a sketch of someone looking distressed at the lowest end of the IQ bell curve. Middle: Actual documentation with detailed comments about monster attack algorithms in a game. Right side: Someone who just writes "// this is bridge" next to a drawing of a bridge, sitting at the other low end of the IQ curve. The perfect balance? The 130+ IQ person with comprehensive, helpful comments that actually explain the why behind complex game logic. The eternal developer struggle: write no comments and claim "self-documenting code," write useless comments stating the obvious, or be the rare specimen who documents the intent and reasoning. Most of us oscillate between all three depending on how much coffee we've had.

Nothing captures the absurdity of code comments like this pizza box stating the blindingly obvious. After 15 years of reviewing PRs, I've seen it all—from stating "this increments i" on i++ to documenting that water is wet. Meanwhile, that cryptic 200-line algorithm that actually needs explanation? Zero comments. The real dark magic happens when you revisit your own code six months later and wonder what drugs you were on when writing it. Future you will thank present you for meaningful comments—not for pointing out that a box contains pizza.