Good comments do not excuse unclear code

A misuse of comments is to provide information that should have been in the code. An example is when someone names variables badly and then tries to add comments describing them:

# A dictionary of families who live in each city

mydict = {

"Midtown": ["Powell", "Bran"],

"Norcross": ["Mont"]

}

def a(dict):

# For each city

for p in dict:

# If there are no families in the city

if not mydict[p]:

# Print it

print("None.")

This script could have been made simpler by using obvious names for variables, functions and collections.