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Comment by philote | Hacker News Reader

Exactly. Plus if I want to find things to fix in my code, searching for TODO is much easier than searching for each of a dozen or so other strings.

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As mentioned in the post, if you are looking for things to fix, you should be looking in an issue tracker. I was trained to put the issue number next to the TODO. Furthermore, we tag the issues so that we can easily identify simpler issues that can help spin up new team members.

I like that method. Where there is a TODO referencing the ticket number. Makes it easier to find the ticket, or where in the code the ticket references. And helps to ensure there actually is a ticket so it isn't forgotten about down the line.

++ to putting the issue number next to the TODO

Before I had tooling nudging me along, I used +++ as a strong visual cue. Yes, as in +++ATH0.

I pepper my code with FIXMEs while it's under development and I'm working on just getting the happy paths to run. Then I go back and fill in error handling and special corner cases that I skipped. That isn't a scenario where you can use issues.

I think todos and tickets have separate use cases. I use todos as short term work trackers. I put them in as I'm writing new code, then usually complete them before I check in, certainly before I merge my branch. Sometimes they slip past me and get into the main repo, but that's a better outcome than just forgetting about it entirely and I don't have to pay the cost of writing up and managing tickets for every loose end. I open tickets for things which will need to be done as a separate work item at a later time. I don't tend to put in a todo with the ticket number because usually something on that scale often doesn't have a specific place where it belongs.

I agree with this a lot. Issue ID(s) go into every commit in my shop. I'm going to think about how or if issue ID(s) should go into TODOs as well. That might be an upgrade to my existing process for preparing a work surface before upgrade.

Because of default highlighting support, I started using TODO. The most valuable part is the colored flag my tools generate to attract attention to code that needs it.

And I can add additional information next to the todo:

  // todo: todo

This is my real gripe. Let's not pretend "TODO" is the end of the comment.

Nobody did?

The article's goal is clearly to provide a quick categorisation of the TODO, rather than require reading the description to discover it: if I'm trying to debug something and reach a bit of code with a bunch of TODOs it's not going to help me much, if I see a FIXME or BUG I'm going to be a lot more interested.

Sometimes the TODO us sufficient through it context (e.g. a docstring empty but for a TODO stanza is obviously a missing doc), but often it's not and is the documentary equivalent of a goto.

The article is clearly to break our tools and search capacity. If you want to add categorization, do add, instead of replacing, like the GP does.

> The article is clearly to break our tools and search capacity.

Get yourself tools which are not hot garbage? All the ones I use let you customise markers however you want.

> All the ones I use let you customise markers however you want

Customisation requires everyone who ever works on that codebase to also do the customization. Defaults are important

> Customisation requires everyone who ever works on that codebase to also do the customization.

And they can go on the pile of all the others customisations necessary when you don't mandate all the tooling by fiat.

> Defaults are important

Defaults are a tool, when they hinder improvement you discard them.

As long as the second todo is also standardized (TODO: FIXME), so it will play nicely with grep.

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