> The way I write code is like this...

That's a very good process to follow. You'll certainly save yourself a lot of time by avoiding the trap of trying to keep everything in your head at once. TODO/placeholder comments are an excellent technique.

> I then see value in leaving those comments where they are

I don't see the value in leaving in comments that aren't either "why" comments (which give information that is not already available by reading and understanding the code) or aren't docstring-style method/class descriptions (which are useful for abstraction. They allow the reader to not need to understand the implementation details of the method/class and instead focus on the inputs/outputs).

Some quick arguments against leaving in the "what this next line of code does" comments:

1. It creates the potential for your comments to lie about what the code does. You haven't had to do a lot of code maintenance, but it's important to realize that code spends much, much more time being read and maintained than being written. It's very easy to slightly change a line and either not update a "what" comment or to incorrectly update the "what" comment. You've now repeating yourself twice, once in javascript and once in a very ambiguous language called english.
 
2. It provides a crutch for writing difficult-to-understand code. If a line is dense and difficult to understand, the right thing to do is make that line easier to understand (with better variable names, a different algorithm, or code pulled out in to a separate method with a good descriptive name). With the "what" comment pattern, it's easy to just throw a comment on it and move on, leaving your code worse.

3. It makes your code more verbose without actually increasing readability. The textbook example of a bad comment is something like
```
// Returns true
return true;
```
You can expect the reader of your code to understand javascript. Transcribing javascript to english is what the programmer does, and by doing it for them in a comment, you constrain them to your favorite mental model for understand javascript. How folks understand code varies wildly and your comments might be helpful to you in the moment, but they will be much less helpful to you 3 months from now, let alone to me or someone else.

"Why" comments and documentation are invaluable, but comments that just try to translate a line of javascript in to a line of english are actively harmful for code maintainability and readability.

Thoughts?