> "If you can’t tell, this isn’t a super serious post. You can easily describe what you want to do in myriad ways using the classic TODO and beyond."
HN is one of the best discussion sites out there now, but I wish that we weren't so formulaic and repetitive. So many things get over-pushed, simply due to the familiarity of popular structures such as "X Considered Harmful" or "Why I Don't X".
If you actually read this blog post, the thread here is taking this way more seriously than the actual author was.
It feels like the post was meant to spark discussion. Which is has. It doesn't feel like anyone is taking it all that seriously to me. Just discussing what has and hasn't worked for them. I have even learned a few things from it.
You have to include disclaimers like that or else people on the web will come after you. But yeah, the hope was that it would spark some discussion on the topic.
Most tools support automatic aggregation and review of code comments starting with "TODO". Maybe some of these tools can be configured to support other prefixes as well. But they all support "TODO" by default, and it's pretty trivial to just put your shorthand descriptors after the "TODO".
Also, if you're pushing commits with a ton of "TODO"'s, then you're probably doing something wrong. Many tools will warn you by default, and many CI/CD pipelines will block your commits altogether. If something is small enough to be addressed right now, then you should address it right now. If it's large enough to require addressing later, then it should be a tracked ticket rather than a loose code comment.
HN is one of the best discussion sites out there now, but I wish that we weren't so formulaic and repetitive. So many things get over-pushed, simply due to the familiarity of popular structures such as "X Considered Harmful" or "Why I Don't X".
If you actually read this blog post, the thread here is taking this way more seriously than the actual author was.