Darth Vader’s Guide to FIXME and TODO comments

There’s an ongoing debate in the developer community about the value of TODO comments in code. Just search google for “TODO comments” and you’ll find some good arguments for and against the practice. The fact is, developers have been doing this for decades and it’s unlikely to change anytime soon.

The same year Star Wars hit the big screen, Applesoft BASIC was introduced in ROM on all Apple II computers. Imagine the TODO and FIXME comments Darth Vaders imperial engineers would have left if the Death Star code was written in Applesoft BASIC.

1000 REM TODO: Monitor radar near thermal exhaust ports 
... (A few hundred lines of code) 
10000 REM FIXME: A well planned attack of thermal exhaust port may cause a chain reaction that will blow us up 
... (A few thousand lines of code) 
100000 REM TODO: Close and open thermal exhaust ports at random 
... (Tens of thousands lines of code)

It’s a good thing Darth Vader didn’t have the tooling we have today for organizing TODO comments in code. If he did, the Death Star would have destroyed the forest moon of Endor. This is what Darth Vader would have seen if his imperial engineers were using imdone.

Originally published at blog.imdone.io.