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lubujacksonHNSource author
Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

Like all extremists, he takes a mild view "if you have to explain the code, maybe it needs to be …

Like all extremists, he takes a mild view "if you have to explain the code, maybe it needs to be refactored" to "no comments ever". Never mind business logic or footguns that can't be fixed right now because of Reasons or "I tried to change this and it blew up because of some remote script calls it that isn't in the codebase" or any number of other very useful comments that inform engineers (and now LLMs) as guideposts along the way. But I worked at a company that loved Uncle Bob and enforced "no comments!" as a rule... just guess how clean and tidy that codebase was!

Original discussionStop sending me PRs; a rant111 source comments · at import
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throwaway2037HN

> Clean Code [U]ncle Bob style Without starting a flame war, in 2026, is this still really a thing? I cannot recall any developer that I thought was excellent ever quoting "Clean Code [U]ncle Bob style" as gospel for how to write your code. There are just so many silly rules that he touts.

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throwaway2037HN

You raise some good points here. When I write comments, I only write what is not obvious from code. Example: Imagine there is some bizarre business rule that some insurance contract is 6% cheaper to write on the last business day of the month. That is exactly the kind of thing I will write inline code comments about. Someone without deep knowledge of that code would be clueless about that specific business rule. I forgot about the no comments rule. Yeah, that sounds insane.

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usewikHN

I find his particular style far from extrimist. I see the delivery as artistic style, serving to make a point. A kind of thought-bait, inviting one to consider the reason behind a jarring argument and hopefully arrive at a useful, even if milder and more practical conclusion on the no-comments only spectrum.

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