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I have to object here and say that out-of-date comments are better than no comments. I've worked in organizations with "no comments" policies and having no clue what people ever planned to achieve with a piece of code is worse than some old misguided explanation for sure.

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I wouldn’t support a no-comment policy, but I’ve wasted a lot of time thanks to misleading comments.

Notices a kindred spirit

You get it. I get it. Unfortunately every intro class inculcates generous commenting, a "best practice" further promoted by corporate proceduralists and mediocre programmers who inexorably become managers.

A comment longer than 160 characters is always weak-sauce justification for logic written awkwardly.

For the most part comments I appreciate are something like "the obvious thing here is xyz, but we can't do that because of this goofy limitation of software we're integrating with."

You have to assume that comments are out of date, then it's easier to make use of them.

But out of date in which way? It could be anything from some extra cases to literally the opposite of what the comment says to the code has changed so much it’s not even clear what the comment refers to anymore.

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