This is no surprise to me. I really don’t like to write source code comments. Why? Because if my code isn’t clear and easy enough for one to read and easily understand, I need to refactor. Many times I ask friends to take a look at code snippets and check if they understand. When they don’t, the method is usually too big or the variable/method names are not clear enough, and then I refactor to make it better to understand.

One example that I love (and use in many presentations) is the code to send e-mails using Java Mail API. The code would be something like this (from Java World tutorial):

// create some properties and get the default Session
Properties props = new Properties();
props.put("mail.smtp.host", _smtpHost);
Session session = Session.getDefaultInstance(props, null);
 
// create a message
Address replyToList[] = { new InternetAddress(replyTo) };
Message newMessage = new MimeMessage(session);
if (_fromName != null)
    newMessage.setFrom(new InternetAddress(from,
        _fromName + " on behalf of " + replyTo));
else
    newMessage.setFrom(new InternetAddress(from));
    newMessage.setReplyTo(replyToList);
    newMessage.setRecipients(Message.RecipientType.BCC, 
            _toList);
    newMessage.setSubject(subject);
    newMessage.setSentDate(sentDate);
 
// send newMessage
Transport transport = session.getTransport(SMTP_MAIL);
transport.connect(_smtpHost, _user, _password);
transport.sendMessage(newMessage, _toList);

I know that this is just an example but you know that it’s not difficult to find monsters like this one in production code.

This code is so difficult to read that the programmer had to say what he was doing, otherwise nobody would understand its purpose. There is a lot of infrastructure and business code together resulting on a huge abstraction leak.

Now take a look at the following code (from Fluent Mail API) and tell me how many seconds do you need to understand what the code does:

new EmailMessage()
    .from("demo@guilhermechapiewski.com")
    .to("destination@address.com")
    .withSubject("Fluent Mail API")
    .withBody("Demo message")
    .send();

This is an extreme example, of course. Maybe you will not write Fluent Interfaces for every little thing you need in your code, but if you add just a little bit of organization (using a better abstraction) it will already improve code readability:

class Email {
    public Email(String from, String to, ...) { ... }
    public void setFrom(String from) { ... }
    public void setTo(String to) { ... }
    public void send() {
        // put your complicated Java Mail code here
    }
}

Just by encapsulating the code in an abstraction that makes sense the WTF effect will be sensibly reduced. The programmers can now at least assume that the code sends e-mail messages since it’s included in a class called “Email”.

And that’s the point. When I create a culture of prohibiting myself from writing code comments, I’m obligating me to write easy, maintainable and understandable code.

That’s very extreme, I know, but the results of this approach are awesome.