I don't believe I comment excessively, but in code reviews I've only ever been told to remove comments rather than to add more while working as a software engineer.
I write programs cca 2:1 comments:code and it is consistently praised for its readability during code reviews and by later maintainers that have to add features to it.
Literate programming is not really comments, rather documentation and code combined. Whether that's a good idea is another question, it never really caught on. But when you have TeX and TAOCP in your back pocket, a couple of flops is no great shakes.
Programming practices vary over time and depend on the preferences of those writing the code. There are some, myself included, who believe the naming conventions and organization of the code should be meaningful to make it easier for other developers to read the code. Typically, if code is complex, a comment might be justified, though it often indicates that the code needs to be simplified. Typically, if I write a comment, it will mostly be something along the lines of why we took this approach or any dependencies that aren't obvious. That said, documentation comments (e.g. classes and methods) are useful for automated tools that help developers see API specs or automated swagger/openid UIs.
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[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 26.3 ms ] threadNo, they aren't. Find a better hobby than asking absurd questions several times a day.