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I’m a fan of comments, but in this case I would reach for an enum with descriptively-named members, e.g. HTTPStatus.TOO_MANY_REQUESTS

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Making it strictly worse. TOO_MANY_REQUESTS? How many is too much? In what scenarios?

The code comment in the GP is pithy, explanatory, and reads in plain English. Yours is ripe for misunderstanding.

My bad for not being clear, I was really talking about the comment saying 429 means “too many requests”. By all means comment to say that service X has a rate limit of N req/min but a comment saying 429 means too many requests is exactly one of those things that’s better expressed in an enum.

301; 302; 401; 429; 504; I shouldn’t need comments to tell me what they are, nor should it be expected that anyone touching the code knows them off the top of their head.

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