Don’t Fear the // TODO
Leverage the tools that exist in Visual Studio to track your pending tasks and improve your productivity
Visual Studio Tracks Your “// TODO” Comments
From within Visual Studio Go to View -> Task List. This will display the Task List window and show you any area of your open Solution that has existing comments that start with // TODO. You can filter down to your Current Project, Current Document, or Open Documents. It even will allow you to search the list.
It doesn’t just recognize // TODO, but will also recognize // HACK
What if I Don’t Use English?
You can customize the words that trigger a Task View entry in your Visual Studio options.
1. Go to Tools
2. Go to Options
3. Expand the Environment options
4. Go to Task List
5. Enter any words you would like to highlight from your code comments.
How Should I Use It?
Properly leveraging the Task List window can be fantastic for your productivity. Here are a few of the ways I have personally used this window to improve my workflow.
- Leaving occasional
// TODOcomments while prototyping when the unwritten code will not change functionality. It serves as a reminder to complete the code before delivering a milestone or making a final commit. - When writing a Web API, create the first round of CRUD endpoints using fake data and add
// TODOto the top of every method. When all of the base endpoints are in there is now an easy checklist to complete. - Adding
// CONSIDERto the list of words tracked by Visual Studio and using it to keep a list of places where long-term improvements can be made to a codebase. This can be set to a lower priority so that other tracked words stand out within the list.
