If your code isn't self-explanatory, it's bad code -- and "your code" includes comments. As soon as it's quicker to ask you how your code works than to learn it from having the code in front of them, you can bet you've still got work to do. Now sure, a good code overview from the original author is almost always better than jumping in cold, even when you do have copious docs, but I think you see my point. If you're pulling some globally scoped varable from an object to another one that aren't linked in any particular way that can be easily shown programatically, you've lost a good chunk of one of the keys of good code: maintainability.