When I was starting out as a programmer, I used to work with an
engineer who insisted that we write the comments to our C code at the
end of the lines, starting in column 80. "That way", he said, "I can
read the code without being distracted by the comments". I think it
was more his assembly code experience that made him prefer that style,
but unobtrusive comments are certainly a worthwhile goal. Later, I
came up with my own solution to the problem, and although in over
twenty years I have seen only one other programmer who uses it, I
use it all the time in my projects and I wish more people used it too.