Comment by omoikane
2 days ago
I think this is saying there is a habit of updating code without reading and updating the comments associated with the code. I would argue the fix is to have people get in the habit of maintaining comments, as opposed to not writing any comments at all.
If people already have the habit of ignoring comments that are right there in the code, I am not sure they would spend the extra effort to go after commit history. Also, some commits might have originated from private repositories where commit history is not accessible, and the most context we get out of "git blame" might be "code was imported on this date".
It’d be nice if comments were always updated, but the reality of it is that they often aren’t.
Sometimes it’s because the later developer doesn’t think the comment needs to be fixed - maybe they tried to fix a bug in John Doe’s approach, accidentally introduced a new bug, but thought they didn’t touch the clever algorithm.
Sometimes it’s because the comment isn’t proximate to the code it refers to. For example, in the “XYZ initializer” case, maybe XYZ is changed down the line to remove the ABC behaviour, but the comment stays because it is attached to some faraway usage of XYZ.
Notes in commit messages don’t fix either of these problems, obviously. But, on the other hand, they obviously refer to a specific point in time, unlike comments, which makes it easier to figure out if the notes are still relevant or not.
You don't have any control over the people who touch the code after you so you cannot "fix" the risk that someone updates your code without the comment. You do have control over your own commit though.