How the code in tip 2 could be made comment free:
check_data_records();
perform_transactions();

And the code in tip 3:
const MAX_NUMBER_OF_PACKETS = 10;
const TCP_BITMASK = 0×1F;

“Or, better yet, don’t do comments and make the code speak for itself”

What a load of garbage. !! For professional companies and programmers, comments are a must. Code needs to be maintained and the original developer is not going to be there forever, and if they are, they probably won’t remember what the heck they wrote a function or class for anyway two years down the track.

As an employer, or company CIO, or owner of a piece of code that needs to be updated / maintained, the last thing you want is to have a new developer sitting crawling through code unnecessarily trying to read and interpret someone else’s style and determine what a piece of code is doing, when all they needed to do was read the Brief, and the Date it was done, and any Updates that were added and Why.

Laziness is no excuse to not be professional and think about those coming along behind you that may need to review what you have done. A simple few lines of comment could save a great deal of time, money, and grief.

Definitely a Coding 101 that most people overlook. Even I’m guilty of it… it took my first big project to learn how blowing off documentation is a recipe for disaster…and block-box coding.

Comments before code saves me hours if not days. Because after I finish one section sometimes I’m so into the previous section that I forget what the intentions of the previous codeblock where =P