Banners, dividers, closing-brace comments, emoji decoration

Comments and text: one of the ways AI coding agents bloat software, from lessloc's pattern catalog. lessloc catches it as narration.

What makes banners, dividers, closing-brace comments, emoji decoration a bad practice?

The standard that calls it a bad practice: Clean Code: Position Markers, Closing Brace Comments.

lessloc catches it as narration.

narration (tier 3): Comments that narrate the code, decorate it or restate a name, closing-brace comments, and log lines that narrate each step.

Caught as narration:

python

# ========== Helpers ==========
def a():
    return 1

Written well:

python

# Rates are cached for a minute: the provider bills per call
def a():
    return 1

Caught as narration:

function a() {
  return 1;
} // end function

Written well:

function a() {
  return 1;
}

The other patterns in Comments and text:

Comments that narrate what the code does: lessloc catches it as narration.
Docs that restate the name: lessloc catches it as narration.
History and messages to the requester: lessloc catches it as history.
Comment blocks and comment-heavy changes: lessloc catches it as comment-block and comment-density.
Log lines that narrate each step: lessloc catches it as narration (three or more in a file).
Docs that still name what a change removed: lessloc catches it as stale-doc.
Summary, report and notes files: lessloc catches it as junk-file and refuses it before it lands.
Doc files and README growth nobody asked for: lessloc catches it as unrequested-doc.
Docs deleted wholesale to shrink a change: lessloc catches it as doc-removed.
Always-loaded instructions that grow: lessloc catches it as long-instructions.
Commit messages that recap the diff file by file: The commit hook warns when a message lists the files the diff shows.