Why Self-Explaining Code Beats Comments: A Refactoring Approach

The author recounts inheriting a codebase where a misleading comment about a tax calculation caused hours of debugging, which eroded their trust in code comments. They describe a simple fix: when a block needs explaining, extract it into a function whose name states its intent. Because names are checked by the compiler and stay in sync with the implementation, they are less prone to drift than free-form comments. A winter-discount example shows how splitting logic into named helpers makes the main function read like a sentence and isolates future changes. The article cautions against extracting trivial lines and against leaving the old comment in place after refactoring.