The TODO that outlived the team

Some TODO comments are older than the people reading them. The author left, the team rotated, and the line still sits there, unowned.

A TODO with no owner is a wish

"TODO: fix this later" is not a plan. It has no name, no date, and no ticket. It is a note to nobody, and nobody acts on it.

Why they survive

A TODO compiles. It ships. Nothing breaks because it exists, so nothing forces anyone to look at it again. Years pass this way.

Date and sign them

If a TODO is worth writing, it is worth attributing: a name and a date. "TODO(crystian, 2024-03): handle the retry case" tells the next reader who to ask and how stale the comment already is.

Or convert it to an issue

If the work is real, it belongs in the tracker, not in a comment nobody searches. An issue has a status, an owner, and a place to close it. A comment does not.

Or delete it

If nobody has acted on a TODO in years, it is not a plan, it is decoration. Delete it. If the work still matters, someone will rediscover it and write a better one.

The rule

Every TODO gets an owner and a date, or a ticket, or a delete. Anything else is a comment pretending to be a commitment.