> Typically keep comments on a single line without line breaks — if a comment is useful, developers will scroll to read them, if it’s not they can easily scroll past it.
Disagree. Personally that sounds like a massive barrier to reading the comment to me. Limited width column text is generally regarded as easier to read, make your comments easier to read. Especially as I probably have the code open in a limited width window, as that's what I expect from code.
Yeah, if IDE's allowed code folding of comments then the authors original problem (having to scroll past comments they thought weren't useful) wouldn't be that big a deal.
If line breaks really were irrelevant, the author wouldn't have felt the need to give a tip all around optimising line breaks.
Personally, I would have hoped by 2026 we had better IDE's and tools for managing code in text files such that developers with different preferences for a number of characters in a column or things like how you display comments can be accommodated. Yet still teams end up arguing about what standard to use.
This is a bit like vim vs Emacs - everyone should be able to use their favorite setup, and the formatting should not get in the way of the engineer's preferences.
Who makes assumptions about how others do things in 2026? Line breaks are apparently relevant, review agents complain about them, soft breaks are super annoying for vim motion users, opinions are still like ani
When code is a maze describes my 1988 IOCCC entry [1]
[1] https://tromp.github.io/pearls.html#mazeSmart developers don’t write mazes.
> In code, comments are our signposts
No. Naming and good architecture are. Intuitive folder trees. Concise docs. Clear separation of concerns such that naming can suffice.
The more comments you need to ‘map’ your code, the worse of a job you’ve done.
> Typically keep comments on a single line without line breaks — if a comment is useful, developers will scroll to read them, if it’s not they can easily scroll past it.
Disagree. Personally that sounds like a massive barrier to reading the comment to me. Limited width column text is generally regarded as easier to read, make your comments easier to read. Especially as I probably have the code open in a limited width window, as that's what I expect from code.
What? You don't like horizontally scrolling 6000 columns to read something?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_folding
Yeah, if IDE's allowed code folding of comments then the authors original problem (having to scroll past comments they thought weren't useful) wouldn't be that big a deal.
many do. for example: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/code-folding-settings.ht...
there are also extensions for vscode that do this, vim plugins, etc
Who doesn’t have soft wrapping enabled in 2026? Line breaks are irrelevant
If line breaks really were irrelevant, the author wouldn't have felt the need to give a tip all around optimising line breaks.
Personally, I would have hoped by 2026 we had better IDE's and tools for managing code in text files such that developers with different preferences for a number of characters in a column or things like how you display comments can be accommodated. Yet still teams end up arguing about what standard to use.
I, in fact, do not have wrapping enabled in my IDE....
You never wrote Java I see
Java is why I don't have line wrapping enabled. It makes code unreadable when everything needs to be wrapped.
Soft like breaks in a code editor? That's insane
And so the war began.
This is a bit like vim vs Emacs - everyone should be able to use their favorite setup, and the formatting should not get in the way of the engineer's preferences.
Who makes assumptions about how others do things in 2026? Line breaks are apparently relevant, review agents complain about them, soft breaks are super annoying for vim motion users, opinions are still like ani
Sounds good. I've lost count of how many mazes I've made. Just call me the Architect of the Labyrinth.
Once again I am asking, who is this person and why do they think they are qualified to tell me what's best?