Too many comments are much worse than to few. They take time to write, and even more time to maintain. Throughout the life of a project, code will always reflect what the program does, comments will be inaccurate the instant the code changes. Once the intent to the code does not match the comment, you are on a slippery downhill slope. Comments are not tested by compliers for correctness, so incorrect comments cannot be detected and corrected by the programmer unless huge amounts of attention to detail, where it makes little difference, is made.

In my experiance new programmers often overcomment code with useless comments that add no value. Extreme cases such as this are common

int x ; // Integer x // Copy the string bob into fred making sure not to overflow the buffer. strncpy(bob, fred,sizeof(bob)); 

(The error is intentional to make a point)

However devs putting in too few comments is just as common......

Too many comments are much worse than too few. They take time to write, and even more time to maintain. Throughout the life of a project, code will always reflect what the program does, comments will be inaccurate the instant the code changes. Once the intent to the code does not match the comment, you are on a slippery downhill slope. Comments are not tested by compilers for correctness, so incorrect comments cannot be detected and corrected by the programmer unless huge amounts of attention to detail, where it makes little difference, is made.

In my experience new programmers often overcomment code with useless comments that add no value. Extreme cases such as this are common

int x ; // Integer x // Copy the string bob into fred making sure not to overflow the buffer. strncpy(bob, fred,sizeof(bob)); 

(The error is intentional to make a point)

However devs putting in too few comments is just as common......