Python commenting style

[namarino]

Hey guys, I'm just learning Python. What is considered good style when commenting? What should you comment? For example, I'm writing a very simple program for class right now that is just a series of if else. There are no functions or anything. I was thinking that I would just have to comment the if statements. But then I thought that they're already pretty self explanatory. Anyway, thanks for your help!

[ICantThinkOfAnyGoodName]

If it's obvious what something does, you don't need to comment. However if you need to take a closer look to see what's going on, comment it.

[Enderman]

they're comments...

write whatever you want

it doesnt matter unless youre planning to post your code online for others to use, in which case you should be explaining stuff more complex than an if statement.

[namarino]

they're comments...

write whatever you want

it doesnt matter unless youre planning to post your code online for others to use, in which case you should be explaining stuff more complex than an if statement.

....yes I know....I was asking about style not content...

[Enderman]

....yes I know....I was asking about style not content...

oh really?

then why did you type

 

What should you comment?

[namarino]

oh really?

then why did you type

Yes I said what kind of things should I comment not what to write in the comments.

[Enderman]

Yes I said what kind of things should I comment not what to write in the comments.

Yes and I said stuff more complex than an if statement, I already answered that question

 

The point of comments is to explain a piece of code that someone wouldn't comprehend, such as

Dvector Solvex(const Dmatrix &Amat, const Dvector &bvect){    Dvector sol;    float answer2=Det(Amat);    for (int x=0; x<bvect.size(); ++x)    {        float answer1=Det(Replace(Amat,x,bvect));        sol.push_back(answer1/answer2);    }    return(sol);}

then someone who knows the programming language might not know what this piece of code is doing, so you explain that in a comment like "dividing the determinant of the a matrix by the original a matrix, we can find the solutions of x"

 

comments are not to teach people how the language works

they are for comprehensive reasons

[madknight3]

Check out the popular PEP 8 style guide for Python. It has a section on comments as well as a lot of other stuff.

[Neil]

Check out the popular PEP 8 style guide for Python. It has a section on comments as well as a lot of other stuff.

 

Yes. PEP8 is what you want.

[Nuluvius]

There's also a school of thought that dictates that there should never usually be a need for comments at all. All code should be written such that it is completely self describing.

While I ascribe to this principle (I think it also makes one a better developer), in reality there are caveats.