This is something that is always stated by people who are opposed to comments, but I’ve never seen any such thing in practice. If being mislead by incorrect comments is so common, there should be a bunch of stories around about disasters caused by them - and I’ve never read a single such story.
I had a girl in high school (high school!) literally say to me “when am I going to get to feel that dick of yours inside me?” and I blew it, thought she was just joking.
I’m from the camp that thinks if you’re trying to make a case (about any subject), you should start with your strongest point and work to your weakest point. Every argument I’ve ever seen against code comments starts off with the weakest imaginable points. Usually the first point made is sample code like “x = x + 1” with the absurdly unnecessary comment “add 1 to x” - as if that’s ever something that pro-comment programmers do. This video at least started off with a novel weak point (somebody using a comment with a magic number instead of making it a constant) although it’s just as weak as the “x = x + 1” argument.
It’s interesting that this shit is how Lyndon Johnson rose to prominence in the Democratic party. As a newly-minted Congressman in the 1940 election cycle, he acted as a conduit for Texas oil money, funneling it to various Congress and Senate races around the country and allowing the Democratic party to retain control of the House and Senate. This earned him the appreciation of Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn and FDR himself.
It also possibly won WWII, given the isolationism of the GOP at the time.
A great book on this subject is The Last Grain Race by Eric Newby, an autobiographical account of the author’s trip around the world as a crewman on Moshulu just before WWII broke out. Interestingly, Moshulu went on to star in The Godfather Part II (as the ship that brings young Vito Corleone to the US) and is now a floating restaurant in Philadelphia.
Fun school bus fact: school buses have a prybar as standard equipment, and if you call it a crowbar you lose a point on your CDL examination. Why that matters is a mystery to me.