Are 'edited by' inline comments the norm in shops which use revision control?

Posted by Joshua Smith on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Joshua Smith
Published on 2011-02-16T16:25:37Z Indexed on 2011/03/03 15:33 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 536

Filed under:

coding-standards

|

comments

The senior dev in our shop insists that whenever code is modified, the programmer responsible should add an inline comment stating what he did. These comments usually look like // YYYY-MM-DD <User ID> Added this IF block per bug 1234.

We use TFS for revision control, and it seems to me that comments of this sort are much more appropriate as check-in notes rather than inline noise. TFS even allows you to associate a check-in with one or more bugs. Some of our older, often-modified class files look like they have a comment-to-LOC ratio approaching 1:1. To my eyes, these comments make the code harder to read and add zero value.

Is this a standard (or at least common) practice in other shops?

© Programmers or respective owner

Related posts about coding-standards

iPhone/Cocoa Coding Standards

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Are there any generally-accepted coding standards (naming, casting etc) that apply specifically to iPhone/Cocoa/Objective-C? I know Microsoft has published similar standards as they relate to .Net and C# but haven't run across anything related to the iPhone world. >>> More
How to make developers follow coding standards?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
How can I make developers follow coding standards? In our company: I've given documents and they don't have the patience to read it and follow it. I've tried telling them again and again "please do it this way" they nod their heads, but still do it the wrong way We're doing a project for the third… >>> More
Coding standards

as seen on SQL Blogcasts - Search for 'SQL Blogcasts'
This post will be about coding standards. There are countless articles and blog posts related to this topic, so I know this post will not be too revealing. Yet I would like to mention a few things I came across during my work with the T-SQL code. Naming convention - there are many of them obviously… >>> More
Quick example: why coding standards must be in place

as seen on ASP.net Weblogs - Search for 'ASP.net Weblogs'
One quick example why coding standards must be in place. Take a look at the following code – property names are changed but not anything else. public string Property1 { get; set; } public string Property2 { get; set; } … >>> More
Better Coding Standards in JavaScript 5

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
JavaScript 5 (ECMAScript 5) has just been released and it promises to bring stricter code and better coding standards to the table. To learn more about this exciting new update to the Internet's workhorse, read on. >>> More

Related posts about comments

SQL Developer Data Modeler: On Notes, Comments, and Comments in RDBMS

as seen on Oracle Blogs - Search for 'Oracle Blogs'
Ah the beautiful data model. They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words. And then we have our diagrams, how many words are they worth? Our friends from the Human Relations sample schema So our models describe how the data ‘works’ – whether that be at a logical-business level, or a… >>> More
Comments on Comments

as seen on Geeks with Blogs - Search for 'Geeks with Blogs'
I almost tweeted a reply to Capar Kleijne's question about comments on Twitter, but realized that my opinion exceeded 140 characters. The following is based upon my experience with extremes and approaches that I find useful in code comments. There are a couple extremes that I've seen and reasons… >>> More
Comments in string and strings in comments

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi there, I am trying to count characters in comments included in C code using Python and Regex, but no success. I can erase strings first to get rid of comments in strings, but this will erase string in comments too and result will be bad ofc. Is there any chance to ask by using regex to not match… >>> More
checkins/recent not returning comments or even counts of comments

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
My application has been using the checkins/recent endpoint to show where all the current users friends are currently at and I had included a button the user could press to comment on a checkin. The button used to have the comment count on it until recently. It seems the checkins/recent endpoint no… >>> More
VS for Database Pros (GDR R2) Removes Sproc Comments (2 replies)

as seen on .NET 247 - Search for '.NET 247'
I have been working with my team to implement Data Dude GDR R2 for managing ALL of the databases for our applications. So far I am very pleased by what we can do with the tool with a single exception. I want to have a header with comments as part of every stored procedure so we can track the history… >>> More