And yet, outdated comments are far, far more common than outdated function names.
Because people don’t try to squeeze a complete description of what a function does into a single identifier, which is what you you would have to do if you want function names to take the place of comments. I for one don’t want to strip all the spaces and punctuation out of my comments so I can use them as function names, and I really didn’t want to read someone else’s code written in that style.
And yet, outdated comments are far, far more common than outdated function names.
Also, if you’re changing a comment which explains the “what”, you should likely change the method name, as well.
It’s important for the client to know what the method does by looking at the name, so why would you duplicate your effort?
Because people don’t try to squeeze a complete description of what a function does into a single identifier, which is what you you would have to do if you want function names to take the place of comments. I for one don’t want to strip all the spaces and punctuation out of my comments so I can use them as function names, and I really didn’t want to read someone else’s code written in that style.