Hacker News Reader

Comment by vedranm | Hacker News Reader

Since TeX and LLVM were already mentioned, I will casually mention the comments in Laravel's codebase which are all three lines long with each line exactly three characters shorter than the previous line. The art of computer programming at work.

Example (config file, but the entire codebase is like that): https://imgur.com/UnIUZmZ

View on HN

Honestly...neurotic and counterproductive. You have to add too much useless words to make it fit. Most of these comments could be much shorter and easier to read. Also too much separators and whitespace around those comments.

Opinions differ. I personally like it, but I don't think I would manage do it in a reasonable large codebase. Still, I agree with the points brought up in the Reddit discussion on the topic (https://www.reddit.com/r/laravel/comments/20ovey/just_notice...), in particluar:

  I think it's awesome and I'm trying to do this too. It is a great trick that forces you 
  to re-read your comments and be as clear as you can. Also, you take the time to find 
  synonyms and look for typos. Overall it's a great way to learn how to be thorough.

+1 upvote for Laravel source code

Reply on news.ycombinator.com