Communication Through Comments
Comments are an essential form of communication between programmers in collaborative environments—without them, software engineers would have to look at code and documentation separately. Though their formatting is often inconsistent or confusing, comments are still the most elegant way to facilitate communication through code, and the easiest one to read.
In this example, the submitter has written two comments. The first explains the purpose of this code, which is to create a storage container that holds very large numeric values. The second comment, "CHECK ME SHOULD THIS BE INT OR MY INT," marks the following lines as a point of confusion. The submitter is unsure which name to use here, and they are leaving a note (either to themself or to the grader) to come back and check it.
This example is part of a group project. Several people were editing the document at once, so one of them left the comment "Please nobody touch this i cannot fix it if you break it i have no idea why it works" to prevent someone else from accidentally damaging the code. Of course, it seems this student's wish was not granted, as someone else replied in another comment, "no."
Communicative comments range from humorous to passive-aggressive to outright hostile. Programming is far from clear-cut, and different people often solve problems in very different ways. Comments express these disagreements, painting a fascinating picture of the relationships between coworkers and classmates. Even the absence of detailed comments indicates a sense of urgency or last-minute sprints to finish a project.