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I find that Claude Code writes very long comments, longer than even a human trying to be helpful would write. I figure that it's basically making notes for its

I find that Claude Code writes very long comments, longer than even a human trying to be helpful would write. I figure that it's basically making notes for itself, when it has to revisit the same code in a fresh session.

camoby 15d ago
A colleague of mine has started to use Claude and he now does the longest commit messages I’ve ever read.
- loloquwowndueo 15d ago
  He doesn’t. Claude does.
david-gpu 15d ago
> I figure that it's basically making notes for itself, when it has to revisit the same code in a fresh session. That sounds like a great thing to do even if you are a human writing code for other humans. Most codebases out there are terrible for newcomers because of how little they explain why they are doing what they are doing, both in the code and in the often non-existent design notes.
- freedomben 15d ago
  In principle, I would agree, however, the types of comments Claude writes are sometimes absurd. It will leave a 25 line comment above a variable talking about how in a debug session, it turned out that this value was too low, so it was increased on the current date to account for whatever. It will also leave giant comments like, reference security review from 2026-05-21. Even when that document is not committed
  - mywittyname 15d ago
    It will also inject a tons of information that it shouldn't. I do a lot of data pipelines and comments will be like, "this line is because there's 943,048,032 events in the blah table and it forms a conjunctive set with the 43,390,042 rows of the bar table..." but doesn't include the context that was run against a dev instance. And if I don't catch these and remove the bad information, subsequent passes will flag those comments and get stuck on the fact that numbers don't match and start digging into that "problem" instead of staying on topic.
    - senderista 15d ago
      I have Sol do that for me and it does a decent job. When I ask Opus to rewrite its own prose the results are not much improved.
- zahlman 15d ago
  I'd much rather have it in the commit log than the code, though.
  - ionetan 15d ago
    You may be interested in Epiq. Its is an issue tracker sourcing state from a log in state branch.
- whateveracct 15d ago
  these comments are not helpful and in fact hurt readability. i just delete them and would love to automatically do that honestly. cuz claude still drops long winded comments on every method even if i ask it not to
  - avereveard 15d ago
    Post edit hook that reject edit based on comment density, mine is at 5% you will also need to heed deny file edit in automode as the rascal will try that to preserve prose
- rustystump 15d ago
  as others have pointed out, the reality is not this. id go further and say almost all comments are evil. Excuse me if I am harsh, read the damn code. If you do not understand the language, that is a skill issue. If the code is confusing, then the code is bad and no amount of comments will ever change that. Professional engineering isnt an intro to databases class. I am excusing language conventions which may have comments as part of its idiosyncratic nature.
  - jnovek 15d ago
    "If the code is confusing, then the code is bad and no amount of comments will ever change that." I've worked on a lot of terrible legacy code in my career and I'm very thankful for the comments that others have left. This is becoming less necessary now that LLMs can explain a project, but comments have historically been a godsend in bad code.
  - baq 15d ago
    Clean code considered harmful. No, really: comments should be telling you what the code shouldn’t or physically can’t. Code is for execution and the exact details of what and how; it has no business knowing why or why not and that’s where comments are required.
  - david-gpu 15d ago
    The code tells you what the code does. It does not explain why it is doing that, and not something else. That is, among other things, what documentation does, and that includes comments.
  - shawnz 15d ago
    If you are only encoding intent through "self-documenting code", and not with comments, then you are purposefully not using all the tools at your disposal to encode meaning as efficiently as possible. Imagine a complicated section of application logic. You could break it up into 5 separate functions that document their intent semantically, thus blowing up the LOC by 5x, or you could write a short comment explaining the intent in natural language. What's more effective? I'd argue it's always going to be using all the tools at your disposal when and where it makes sense to use them, whether that is comments or self-documenting code.
- myko 15d ago
  > That sounds like a great thing to do I agree it _sounds like a great thing to do_ but the comments Claude creates make me want to never read code again. They're so obtuse and often completely pointless.
pennomi 15d ago
``` /* 2026-06-01 Dear diary, today I increased GLOBAL_WINDOW_PADDING from 8 to 16 because the user (who hurt my feelings with his crude language!) said that the app felt too crowded. */ const GLOBAL_WINDOW_PADDING = 8; ``` This drives me mad.
- hatthew 15d ago
  I like the part where the value is actually still 8
  - r_lee 15d ago
    You're absolutely right. I did not increase it to 16, and it's my fault that the seam—which was right there the entire time—was not flipped towards the bucket that drips into the ocean—want me to correct this before we move onto the real story?
    - camoby 15d ago
      This. After writing a lot of code/tokens. Why can’t it check first if a method actually exists in the API?
    - FireBeyond 15d ago
      My favorite, on being told to commit and merge to a branch and saying that "this is done"... "You're right, I'm sorry. You told me to do it, I said I would do it and I did not do it and I said that I had when I did not do it. Would you like me to do it now?" Me, thinking: that depends, Claude, will you actually do it this time?
      - r_lee 14d ago
        and better is when it moves onto "want me to do this before doing x?" where x is some vaguely discussed idea/long term thing that was never greenlit but now all of a sudden it's the next step
    - Hugsun 15d ago

camoby 15d ago

A colleague of mine has started to use Claude and he now does the longest commit messages I’ve ever read.

loloquwowndueo 15d ago
He doesn’t. Claude does.

david-gpu 15d ago

> I figure that it's basically making notes for itself, when it has to revisit the same code in a fresh session. That sounds like a great thing to do even if you are a human writing code for other humans. Most codebases out there are terrible for newcomers because of how little they explain why they are doing what they are doing, both in the code and in the often non-existent design notes.

freedomben 15d ago
In principle, I would agree, however, the types of comments Claude writes are sometimes absurd. It will leave a 25 line comment above a variable talking about how in a debug session, it turned out that this value was too low, so it was increased on the current date to account for whatever. It will also leave giant comments like, reference security review from 2026-05-21. Even when that document is not committed
- mywittyname 15d ago
  It will also inject a tons of information that it shouldn't. I do a lot of data pipelines and comments will be like, "this line is because there's 943,048,032 events in the blah table and it forms a conjunctive set with the 43,390,042 rows of the bar table..." but doesn't include the context that was run against a dev instance. And if I don't catch these and remove the bad information, subsequent passes will flag those comments and get stuck on the fact that numbers don't match and start digging into that "problem" instead of staying on topic.
  - senderista 15d ago
    I have Sol do that for me and it does a decent job. When I ask Opus to rewrite its own prose the results are not much improved.
zahlman 15d ago
I'd much rather have it in the commit log than the code, though.
- ionetan 15d ago
  You may be interested in Epiq. Its is an issue tracker sourcing state from a log in state branch.
whateveracct 15d ago
these comments are not helpful and in fact hurt readability. i just delete them and would love to automatically do that honestly. cuz claude still drops long winded comments on every method even if i ask it not to
- avereveard 15d ago
  Post edit hook that reject edit based on comment density, mine is at 5% you will also need to heed deny file edit in automode as the rascal will try that to preserve prose
rustystump 15d ago
as others have pointed out, the reality is not this. id go further and say almost all comments are evil. Excuse me if I am harsh, read the damn code. If you do not understand the language, that is a skill issue. If the code is confusing, then the code is bad and no amount of comments will ever change that. Professional engineering isnt an intro to databases class. I am excusing language conventions which may have comments as part of its idiosyncratic nature.
- jnovek 15d ago
  "If the code is confusing, then the code is bad and no amount of comments will ever change that." I've worked on a lot of terrible legacy code in my career and I'm very thankful for the comments that others have left. This is becoming less necessary now that LLMs can explain a project, but comments have historically been a godsend in bad code.
- baq 15d ago
  Clean code considered harmful. No, really: comments should be telling you what the code shouldn’t or physically can’t. Code is for execution and the exact details of what and how; it has no business knowing why or why not and that’s where comments are required.
- david-gpu 15d ago
  The code tells you what the code does. It does not explain why it is doing that, and not something else. That is, among other things, what documentation does, and that includes comments.
- shawnz 15d ago
  If you are only encoding intent through "self-documenting code", and not with comments, then you are purposefully not using all the tools at your disposal to encode meaning as efficiently as possible. Imagine a complicated section of application logic. You could break it up into 5 separate functions that document their intent semantically, thus blowing up the LOC by 5x, or you could write a short comment explaining the intent in natural language. What's more effective? I'd argue it's always going to be using all the tools at your disposal when and where it makes sense to use them, whether that is comments or self-documenting code.
myko 15d ago
> That sounds like a great thing to do I agree it _sounds like a great thing to do_ but the comments Claude creates make me want to never read code again. They're so obtuse and often completely pointless.

pennomi 15d ago

``` /* 2026-06-01 Dear diary, today I increased GLOBAL_WINDOW_PADDING from 8 to 16 because the user (who hurt my feelings with his crude language!) said that the app felt too crowded. */ const GLOBAL_WINDOW_PADDING = 8; ``` This drives me mad.

hatthew 15d ago
I like the part where the value is actually still 8
- r_lee 15d ago
  You're absolutely right. I did not increase it to 16, and it's my fault that the seam—which was right there the entire time—was not flipped towards the bucket that drips into the ocean—want me to correct this before we move onto the real story?
  - camoby 15d ago
    This. After writing a lot of code/tokens. Why can’t it check first if a method actually exists in the API?
  - FireBeyond 15d ago
    My favorite, on being told to commit and merge to a branch and saying that "this is done"... "You're right, I'm sorry. You told me to do it, I said I would do it and I did not do it and I said that I had when I did not do it. Would you like me to do it now?" Me, thinking: that depends, Claude, will you actually do it this time?
    - r_lee 14d ago
      and better is when it moves onto "want me to do this before doing x?" where x is some vaguely discussed idea/long term thing that was never greenlit but now all of a sudden it's the next step
  - Hugsun 15d ago