the very simple thing lacking in this solution is that sometimes you want to programmatically _add_ comments to (or preserve comments within) some output file format. If they must be stripped before parsing, then it is definitionally impossible to do either of these things.
It's not unlike saying "actual code shouldn't allow comments - you can have a separate preprocessor in your non-code file that strips those out." Sure, you could do that, but all your line numbers would be meaningless and everyone would hate the language from day 1.
It's not unlike saying "actual code shouldn't allow comments - you can have a separate preprocessor in your non-code file that strips those out." Sure, you could do that, but all your line numbers would be meaningless and everyone would hate the language from day 1.