Log lines that narrate each step ("Starting...", "Successfully saved")

Comments and text: one of the ways AI coding agents bloat software, from lessloc's pattern catalog. lessloc catches it as narration (three or more in a file).

What makes log lines that narrate each step a bad practice?

The standard that calls it a bad practice: Raymond, The Art of Unix Programming, Rule of Silence: "When a program has nothing surprising to say, it should say nothing".

What does lessloc do about log lines that narrate each step?

lessloc catches it as narration (three or more in a file).

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

Examples

Caught as narration:

export async function sync(db) {
  console.log("Starting sync...");
  const rows = await db.all();
  console.log("Fetched rows");
  await db.save(rows);
  console.log("Successfully saved");
}

Written well:

export async function sync(db) {
  const rows = await db.all();
  await db.save(rows);
  console.log(`synced ${rows.length} rows`);
}

Related patterns

The other patterns in Comments and text:

• Comments that narrate what the code does: lessloc catches it as narration.
• Banners, dividers, closing-brace comments, emoji decoration: 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.
• 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.