"XXX:" is short for "BULLSHIT:" or other profanity to me, generally imply that life sucks.
usually to indicate some horrible hack which is required because we can't quite blow up the codebase to fix it all, and i'm not thinking of a simpler solution today.
it also exists to point out that even though the code looks maybe mindlessly overcomplicated that someone shouldn't just come in and refactor it to make it simpler because it'll blow up some edge condition if you do that. They're the long-term nuclear waste warning messages of a codebase.
usually to indicate some horrible hack which is required because we can't quite blow up the codebase to fix it all, and i'm not thinking of a simpler solution today.
it also exists to point out that even though the code looks maybe mindlessly overcomplicated that someone shouldn't just come in and refactor it to make it simpler because it'll blow up some edge condition if you do that. They're the long-term nuclear waste warning messages of a codebase.