Unfortunately bad comments like this leads people into thinking that all or most comments are useless.
It's true that I don't want to see a comment like "loop through this 50 times". But what may not be obvious is the purpose of the loop, the significance of the number 50. Putting in "why" can save hours.
The only exception where I would want a comment that just says what a line of code is for a really complex line, like a complicated regex for example.
I agree with the point about comments being useful for a really long complicated regex, but any really long complicated regex is a coding problem to begin with. Really, instead of comments (or in addition to comments), the regex should be broken up into logical pieces separated by white-space, just like regular code is. Jeff Atwood explains it well in this classic post: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/06/regular-expressions...
It's true that I don't want to see a comment like "loop through this 50 times". But what may not be obvious is the purpose of the loop, the significance of the number 50. Putting in "why" can save hours.
The only exception where I would want a comment that just says what a line of code is for a really complex line, like a complicated regex for example.