Self-Documenting Code: Why Clear Naming Beats Comment-Heavy Functions

A software developer argues that relying on comments to explain code creates a long-term maintenance burden, as comments often become outdated when logic changes but annotations are not updated. The article illustrates this with a legacy JavaScript function where a comment describing a threshold value was never revised after the actual threshold changed in a later commit. The proposed solution is to write self-documenting code using intention-revealing function and variable names, such as renaming a vague function to clearly describe its purpose. A before-and-after Python example demonstrates how splitting logic into small, focused functions eliminates the need for inline comments entirely. The core argument is that well-named code remains accurate as long as the names are maintained, whereas comments can silently mislead readers and obscure bugs.