Obvious Memes

Oh. My. God. This is the EPITOME of every code comment I've ever encountered! Just like this REVOLUTIONARY stop sign that helpfully points out "THIS IS A STOP SIGN" (in case you somehow missed the giant red octagon), developers everywhere are writing comments like: "// This is a variable" "// Loop starts here" "// Function to do the thing that the function name already clearly states" The sheer AUDACITY of stating the painfully obvious while completely ignoring the complex parts that actually need explanation! I'm having flashbacks to codebases where not a SINGLE comment explains WHY something was done, but there are 47 comments telling me that "i++" increments a counter. The TRAUMA is real!

When the PM says "make sure your documentation is thorough," and you take it literally. Nothing says developer energy like documenting the painfully obvious while completely ignoring the complex parts of your codebase. "How to use this API? Figure it out yourself. How to open a pizza box? Let me write you a dissertation." Ten years in the industry and I've yet to see documentation that isn't either stating the absolute obvious or so cryptic it might as well be written in hieroglyphics. The middle ground simply doesn't exist in our universe.