A good and effective programming practice is characterized by having an optimal algorithm used to implement requirements. In addition to that, maintainable code contains comprehensive comments describing how critical lines function or how different interfaces work with each other. A comment, in computer programming jargon, is a brief description placed near a chunk of code to give an overview regarding the code the comment is pointing to.

Different programming languages make use of different commenting syntax. In C language, the forward slash symbol followed by and asterisk marks the beginning of a comment, while an asterisk followed by a forward slash marks its end similar to what is used in the title. In C++ language, two consecutive forward slashes constitute a comment is declared next. In Visual Basic language, the single apostrophe signifies that the characters following that symbol are just comments.

A good thing about a maintainable code is its property to be easily understood even by people who do not have technical programming background. Also, it is easier to read and refer back to a code that contains proper comments. Even after many years, a programmer is able to decipher his own code with the use of comments. And most of all, an easy to read code is also easy to debug code.