They just repeat what the code is doing. And they are often wrong, because they are not functional, they don't cause compilation errors and they don't cause crashes and make tests fail, so errors in the comments tend to go unnoticed. It is so bad sometimes that I trained myself not to read comments as they can be deceptive.

Comments are a side channel, and IMHO, strictly a side channel. They can be used to express what can't be expressed in code. A common usage is to explain why you chose a solution over another.

I have absolutely no problem with "if" statements, I also think too much indirection is cancer. I have a problem with booleans parameters however. They tend to result in confusing and error prone calls like style(true, false, true), instead of something like style(ITALIC, NO_BOLD, UNDERLINE). In C/C++, I then use "switch" instead of "if". The advantage of "switch" is that the compiler warns you if you forgot a case, you also avoid to problem of accidentally reversing the condition. Make sure your compiler warns you of unintended tall through too.