Code Comments vs Code Reviews

Developers should use code comments to improve code readability, facilitate team collaboration, and aid in future maintenance by explaining complex algorithms, assumptions, or non-obvious behavior meets developers should learn and use code reviews to enhance software reliability, reduce technical debt, and accelerate onboarding of team members by promoting code consistency and best practices. Here's our take.

Code Comments

Nice Pick

Developers should use code comments to improve code readability, facilitate team collaboration, and aid in future maintenance by explaining complex algorithms, assumptions, or non-obvious behavior

Pros

• They are essential in large projects, legacy systems, or when writing public APIs where clear documentation ensures others can understand and extend the code effectively
• Related to: code-documentation, clean-code

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Code Reviews

Developers should learn and use code reviews to enhance software reliability, reduce technical debt, and accelerate onboarding of team members by promoting code consistency and best practices

Pros

• They are essential in agile and DevOps environments for continuous integration, particularly in collaborative projects, open-source development, and industries requiring high code quality such as finance or healthcare
• Related to: version-control, git

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. Code Comments is a concept while Code Reviews is a methodology. We picked Code Comments based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

Code Comments wins

Based on overall popularity. Code Comments is more widely used, but Code Reviews excels in its own space.