TIL my code comments were just me lying to my future self

Last Tuesday I was fixing a script I wrote in January. It had comments like "this handles the edge case" and "don't touch this or it breaks." Problem was, I had no idea WHY I wrote them. I spent 4 hours debugging something that could've been solved in 20 minutes if I'd just explained the actual reason instead of being vague. Turns out I was writing comments to sound smart, not to be useful. My coworker asked me "what does this do?" and I couldn't answer. That was the wake up call. Anyone else catch themselves doing this? What do you put in comments now that actually helps you later?

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wren_thomas167d ago

Vague comments are honestly just future-you getting pranked by past-you, gotta write them like you're explaining to a confused intern lol.