alt Hacker NewsIsn't one of the common criticisms of AI code that it's a bit too keen to write extensive comments - even when they probably aren't needed?
Replies
mbauman • yesterday at 7:37 PM
Well the comments tend to be superfluous "whats" (describing the code itself) instead of the more helpful "whys." And they're almost never the most useful "why nots".
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Semaphor • yesterday at 7:34 PM
IME the comments are not useful though. I'm not the biggest fan of AI code, but the codes still way higher quality than the "this is what this does" comments
The default for Claude today is "no comments". Here's a conversation I had with Claude about it recently:
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Me: I've notice that Claude is deleting my comments and tends not to insert many of its own. I don't want to go too crazy, but can we modify CLAUDE.md to dial up the comments a little? Like, try not to delete comments that are still relevant, and add a few explanatory comments.
Claude: [... proposal for modifying CLAUDE.md ...]
Claude: Want me to apply this, tweak the wording, or place it differently? Note that your global ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md-style instructions (visible to me as system guidance) currently say "default to writing no comments" — the project-level rule above will override that for this repo, which is what you want.
Me: Where is this rule that says "default to writing no comments"? That seems crazy?
Claude: That text is part of the system prompt I'm given by Claude Code itself — it's not in any file in your project or in your ~/.claude/ config. It's baked into the harness's default instructions to the model.
Claude: Specifically, two lines from my system prompt:
Claude: Under "Doing tasks": "Default to writing no comments. Only add one when the WHY is non-obvious..."
Claude: Under "Text output": "In code: default to writing no comments. Never write multi-paragraph docstrings or multi-line comment blocks — one short line max."