What is the best comment in source code you have ever encountered? (2011)
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2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
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In a unit test: # And what father is there among you, who, # if his son asks for a slice of bread, # will offer him a stone? # or if he asks for a fish, # will instead of a fish offer him a snake? my $fish = 'one-fish two-fish red-fish blue-fish'; my $snake = 'oooh! a snake! ooh! snake! ooooooooo!"; (Unit test proceeds to insert both $snake and $fish into a cache object, does a little bit…
loop ... ... // sleep 10 sleep 7 // Changed from "sleep 10" on 11-19-05 // by jvj because Bruce in Buffalo bitched // that it ran too long. Now he's happy. // The next time he bitches, change it to // "sleep 5". That oughta buy us another // year before we have to rewrite it. ... ... until done do repeat
Linux driver >"Do not purchase this card, even as a joke." https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v3.1/source/drivers/net/3c5...
This one is by far the best: Dear maintainer: Once you are done trying to 'optimize' this routine, and have realized what a terrible mistake that was, please increment the following counter as a warning to the next guy: total_hours_wasted_here = 16
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
HN stats
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 356
- Total comments
- 162
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking