Sql Comments Style

Should we stop using -- in SQL comments?

Interesting blog post from Brent Ozar on whether we should stop using -- for SQL Comments. I use these comments a lot because they are quick and easy for me to type. I don’t like voluminous comments but this is a good point.

If clicking the link is too much effort for you, he is saying you should do this

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SELECT *
FROM dbo.Users
WHERE DisplayName = N'Brent Ozar'
/* This line is a comment */
AND Location = N'Iceland'
ORDER BY Reputation DESC;

instead of this

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SELECT *
FROM dbo.Users
WHERE DisplayName = N'Brent Ozar'
-- This line is a comment
AND Location = N'Iceland'
ORDER BY Reputation DESC;

Seems fine in Sentry One

I just tried it in Sentry One and it looks fine to me.

However, if I remember, I will stop using them from now on. However it’s a big burden. /* */ is six key presses (remember the shift) and -- is only two on the same key, so the typing overhead is substantial. 😊

What about PowerShell?

Makes me wonder about PowerShell as well because that is not a compiled language, it is interpreted. I never run monitoring tools against PowerShell code though, so maybe one-liner comments are fine?

Consider the following code.

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# get the content
$content = get-content ./content/posts/2021/sql-comments-style/index.md

# show number of lines in the content
$content.Count

I can’t see a problem with that, can you? Let me know in the comments below.