Solidity – Comments

Comments are an important aspect of programming as they help in providing clarity and understanding to the code. They allow developers to document the code and explain its purpose, making it easier for others to read and maintain the code. Solidity, being a programming language, also supports the use of comments. They are simply added for the convenience of the programmer and anyone else who might read the code in the future.

Why do People Avoid Comments?

Unfortunately, many programmers neglect to include comments in their code. Reason being:

• Lack of Skills: Solidity developers might find it challenging to explain the intent of the code in simple English language, thus they avoid comments when the code is working fine.
• Limited understanding of a specific portion of code: Sometimes solidity developers have a limited understanding of the specific part of the code that could induce the inability to explain the concerned part of the code. 
• Misleading comments: Comments that are outdated or inaccurate or don’t explain correctly can lead to confusion and errors, especially while working with multiple developers on the same project.

Importance of Comments in Solidity 

In Solidity, comments are extremely important for improving the readability of the code. Without the proper comments, even seasoned programmers may find it difficult to understand Solidity’s complex syntax. The purpose of the code, the logic behind it, and instructions on how to use it properly can all be clarified with the aid of comments.

• Explain complex logic: Comments in solidity can be very useful for explaining complex algorithms and business logic making it easy for other developers to understand.
• Document code: Well-documented code can really help in development. By documenting functions, variables, and contracts, comments can help other developers understand the codebase easily and its architecture.
• Improve maintenance: It improves the maintainability of the code. By providing clear and concise comments, developers can make it easier to maintain and update the codebase, reducing bugs or code breakage.
• Increase collaboration: It can increase collaboration between the developers by making it easier for others to contribute to the codebase, understand the intended behavior of the contract, and identify potential issues.
• Time-saving: Adding comments in solidity code helps to save time by avoiding confusion about the reasons for a specific portion of the code. These helps to identify the working of the code quickly. 
• Isolate the Important Blocks of Code: Comments helps to avoid unwanted troubles in the code in case of code upgrades. The warning comments for the specific lines of code can help to avoid unwanted changes which might affect the intent of the whole program.
• Maintaining track of tasks: Comments in Solidity code helps to stay in right direction and also helps to discover susequent tasks that one needs to achieve within the smart contract or decentralized application.

Types of Comments

There are three types of comments in Solidity:

1. Single-Line Comments

Comments that are one line long and are separated by two forward slashes (/). They can be added to the end of a line of code, and they will continue until the end of the line. It’s common practice to use single-line comments to give a succinct explanation of what the code is doing.

Syntax:

// Comment

2. Multi-Line Comments

These are comments that are enclosed in /* */. They can span multiple lines and be used to give a more thorough explanation of the code.

Syntax:

/*

Comment

*/

3. NatSpec Comments

Solidity code documentation is produced using these unique types of comments. They can contain details about the behavior, input, and output parameters of the function and are written in a particular format. NatSpec comments can be used to generate documentation for Solidity.
NatSpec comments are written in a specific format, using tags to specify the purpose of each comment. The following table shows some of the most common tags used in NatSpec comments:

Tag	Description	Used before
@dev	It is a developer’s comment	functions, contracts, and enums
@notice	It is high-level information about a particular function	functions
@param	It is the description of a function parameter	function parameters
@return	It is the description of a function return value	functions
@title	It is the title of a contract or library	contract or library

Syntax:

/**

    * @title Title of contract

    * @dev Dev Comment

    * @param parameter

    * @return return value.

*/

Conclusion

In conclusion, comments are an important aspect of programming, and Solidity supports the use of both single-line and multi-line comments. They help in documenting the code, and explaining its purpose, and can also be used to disable code temporarily during development or testing. It’s a good practice to use comments in your Solidity code to make it easier to understand and maintain.