Say what a comment should do rather than what it shouldn't

- Turn the list of things never to describe into positive bullets.
- Fold in history of what was removed, and the dev journal, as belonging in the
  commit or PR description.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
fkwp
2026-09-24 10:29:45 +02:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5.5
parent 0158e1d0ff
commit d079843656
+6 -9
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@@ -42,15 +42,12 @@ simplification.
- Say the reason, then stop. Test each sentence: does the reason still stand
without it? If so, cut it. Most reasons fit on a line, so a long comment is
worth a second look — it is usually carrying something that isn't one.
- Never describe:
- layout or placement — the stylesheet says it, and changes without the
comment;
- the context around the code — it moves without touching the line;
- design measurements — the design is the source;
- how a decision was reached, or what was rejected — that goes in the PR body
or the feature spec;
- what the next line does, or what an assertion checks.
- No spec ids (D11, AC23) and no browser lists — both go stale silently.
- Write about the line the comment sits on, in terms of what the code does
there — leave layout to the stylesheet and measurements to the design.
- Name the condition ("where the platform can't route audio"), not the browser
or the spec entry.
- Put history — what was tried, removed or rejected, the dev journal — in the
commit or the PR description.
- In tests, comment only structure that looks wrong but isn't: batching, timers,
why this scroll position.