Textual Documentation vs Code Comments

Developers should learn and use textual documentation to ensure code maintainability, facilitate collaboration, and reduce onboarding time for new team members meets 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. Here's our take.

Textual Documentation

Nice Pick

Developers should learn and use textual documentation to ensure code maintainability, facilitate collaboration, and reduce onboarding time for new team members

Pros

• It is essential for open-source projects to attract contributors and for enterprise software to comply with standards and support users
• Related to: markdown, restructuredtext

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Code Comments

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

The Verdict

Use Textual Documentation if: You want it is essential for open-source projects to attract contributors and for enterprise software to comply with standards and support users and can live with specific tradeoffs depend on your use case.

Use Code Comments if: You prioritize 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 over what Textual Documentation offers.

The Bottom Line

Textual Documentation wins

Developers should learn and use textual documentation to ensure code maintainability, facilitate collaboration, and reduce onboarding time for new team members