Every developer inherits a codebase older than their enthusiasm. And deep inside it, they find relics — commented-out lines, half-written logic, and cryptic notes like “FIX THIS LATER” from someone who clearly never came back.
Code comments are supposed to guide future developers. But most of them read like confessions. You can trace emotional states through them — optimism, panic, resignation. A developer’s diary in plain text.
The older the project, the more its comments become archaeology. You start reconstructing decisions from fragments. Why was this function renamed? Why is this validation duplicated? You may never know. The original author probably forgot too.
Good comments age better when they explain why, not what. The code already tells you what it’s doing. What’s valuable is why this approach was chosen. That’s the human layer.
Comments are where code meets memory. If you want to leave something behind, make sure it tells a story worth reading.
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