Commenting code that is removed [closed]

Answer 1

It sounds like you are trying to get around versioning your code. In theory, it sounds like a great idea, but in practice it can get very confusing very quickly.

I highly recommend commenting code out for debugging or running other tests, but after the final decision has been made remove it from the file completely!

Get a good versioning system in place and I think you'll find that the practice of commenting out changes is messy.

Answer 2

The question is, why do you remove code?

Is it useless? Was it a mistake to put it there in the first place?

No comments needed from my point of view.

Answer 3

I agree that it's a terrible suggestion. That's why you have Source Control that has revisions. If you need to go back and see what was changed between two revisions, diff the two revisions.

Answer 4

Nobody here has written much about why you shouldn't leave commented-out code, other than that it looks messy. I think the biggest reason is that the code is likely to stop working. Nobody's compiling it. Nobody's running it through unit tests. When people refactor the rest of the code, they're not refactoring it. So pretty soon, it's going to become useless. Or worse than useless -- someone might uncomment it, blindly trusting that it works.

There are times when I'll comment out code, if we're still doing heavy design/development on a project. At this stage, I'm usually trying out several different designs, looking for the right approach. And sometimes the right approach is one I had already attempted earlier. So it's nice if that code isn't lost in the depths of source control. But once the design has been settled, I'll get rid of the old code.