Commenting code that is removed [closed]

Answer 1

There's a general "clean code" practice that says that one should never keep removed code around as commented out since it clutters and since your CVS/SVN would archive it anyway.

While I do agree with the principle I do not think that it is an acceptable approach for all development situations. In my experience very few people keep track of all the changes in the code and every check-in. as a result, if there is no commented out code, they may never be aware that it has ever existed.

Commenting code out like that could be a way of offering a general warning that it is about to be removed, but of course, there are no guarantees that interested parties would ever see that warning (though if they frequently work with that file, they will see it).

I personally believe that the correct approach is to factor that code out to another private method, and then contact relevant stakeholders and notify them of the pending removal before actually getting rid of the function.