News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The Linux codebase has over 3k TODO comments, many from over a decade ago. Parent comment

Re:The Linux codebase has over 3k TODO comments, many from o... by alacombe on Sunday December 29, 2019 @11:43PM (#21910874)
Most devs I've been working with don't even bother with a full sentence in their commit log.

At this point, we're discussing between what "should be done" in a perfect world, and what's actually been done when you switch between a couple of project in a day, moving from "implementing feature Y" back to "putting down some random fire", back to "implementing feature X" within a day in an undermanned team. Sometime, a hack will get you back running in prod, and a "TODO" will be there next time you actually have time to address the underlying issue.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Linux codebase has over 3k TODO comments, many from o... by geofft on Monday December 30, 2019 @01:30AM (#21911270)
Oh yeah, a TODO is way better than nothing, no disagreement there.

If you have a code review step, "please move this comment from the code to the commit message / the bugtracker / whatever" seems like a reasonable comment. If you don't or you're bypassing it or nobody does good code reviews, sure, leave the TODO in. I am indeed talking about the ideal world and whether we think TODO comments are a good idea in the abstract.

[ Parent | on HN ]