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I don't think your experience is uncommon, I agree that the vast majority of code out there isn't very clear. That being said, you have found code which was clear without comments, so clearly you do have an idea of what clear code without comments means.

Regarding why I don't think that clear code should have comments, it's very simple, comments are not type checked or syntax checked or even tested (unless, I guess, you hire someone to read them). It's very hard to ensure that over time comments don't deteriorate and become unhelpful. This is a much larger maintenance burden than the maintenance of clear code itself.

I think a lot of the issue boils down to people assuming that because all the code they've ever read was unclear, that code itself is inherently unclear.



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