Comments in the plugin

In some of the plugin I see, there is a part which says something like:

PHP:

/**
* @param $game
* @return int
*/


What does this mean, and do they make something better, or are they actually comments and it is just notes for developers?

@param means the paramaters of the function , and @return defines what the function will return. in this case it'l return int.

I do understand that, but does it affect the performance or anything?

if you do @return int and the function under it returned string, it'll give an error.

Oh right, so it is like assert()?

No, it won't. Only return types in PHP 7 will do that.

Return types in PHP 7 will do that.
Doc comments are comments too, except two differences:

• IDE understands them differently. PhpStorm uses doc comments to detect data types of some variables, actually.
• There is a Reflection->getDocComment() method, which proves that PHP has official recognition of the existence of doc comments. This method is used in PluginManager::registerEvents().