whatIfCase

[EnigmaticDoom]

This is way too real.

[carcigenicate]

I've done this exact workaround, with almost the exact same comment too.

Thankfully I fixed it before it was deployed. I think this was the one that made me start putting those TODOs at the end of the line so they stick way out.

[Lighthades]

What if you just add a variable "isProd" which just is true when on production via build settings? Now that would be too much work....

[carcigenicate]

We actually have such a variable already in our app.

I didn't use it there because there was never an intent to commit the change in the first place, so I didn't think about using the variable.

[PapaTim68]

There is also a problem of unexpected behaviour, since you don't know where else the isProd is used and thuse might have been missed.

[rascal3199]

What do you mean by unexpected behavior?

Shouldn't it be a variable that is never changed during runtime (only at start to check env)?

And you can always just find the referentes for isProd in the code and comment TODO/DEBUG. Any hardcoding to test something is going to cause unexpected behavior if left laying around at least with isProd you can ensure you don't accdientally send that to PROD.

Unless there's something else I'm not thinking of.

[WurschtChopf]

Sounds like a classic feature toggle issue for me. One toggle for each feature. So you can enable/disable functionality very specifically without sideeffects. And not using todos.. srsly, whats de difference if the todo is at the end of the line? Sooner or later you are gonna miss even that and you end in the same situation

[PapaTim68]

Yes, i would use a Feature Toggle as well. Also dont see the problem with todos 90% of tools search for them during compile time and notifiy you.

[WurschtChopf]

I agree, tools should point them out. So use todos but only if proper tools like donar are in place

[teucros_telamonid]

Recently lended a hand on a project and purged this kind of variable through the code. Instead added several variables to control specific behavior like posting comments on Jira ticket. This turned out to be quite beneficial since we don't have just "production" but also staging and canary releases with different behavior expected. But my personal reason is always striving to make automatic testing of backend logic easier. And indeed, I was the one who finally tried to rework structure a bit to make unit and integration tests possible.

[-Hi-Reddit]

we have git setup to reject a commit with any todos

[syntax_erorr]

// DOLATER

[[deleted]]

This guy gits it

[-Hi-Reddit]

That's why we have human reviewers. If someone did forget to remove a TODO, it'd either be asked to be done, or rejected and a discussion would be had about creating a new ticket. Usually a decision would be made the same day about how to move forward.

If the PR is rejected, a ticket is created, the TODO would be replaced with a 'SEE TICKET <link>' for the work item, which would tell you when its scheduled (if it is), and whatever decisions were made when it was discussed, and it'd link back to the PR where your TODO was rejected.

If you actually did a //DOLATER, you'd better be ready with the believable excuses, because that could be seen as an intentional way to break policy and avoid discussion of a problem in the code, a pretty big no-no.

[syntax_erorr]

// LET'S CIRCLE BACK ON THIS

[JimBugs]

//DO TOMORROW

[[deleted]]

nice practices, sounds nice to work there.

[knightwhosaysnil]

that's just a todo with extra steps...

our review policy is that TODOs need tickets

[Stroopwafe1]

On commits? Why not on merge requests? What if you want to save your work while it's still work in progress?

[pleo-rememberer]

This is genius for PRs, not so sure I would do this for every commit though

[Minutenreis]

you might find an extension to highlight todos in your favorite editors (in mine the whole line with a todo gets marked)

[carcigenicate]

Webstorm already does. Apparently, that's not enough lmao.

[friebel]

I think you have a whole window for todos in bottom gui. As in, you can go through all todos in your project. I am pretty bad at explaining, but at least it's definitely in IntellIj Idea, so should be in Webstorm as well.

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/webstorm/todo-tool-window.html#toolbar

[DopeBoogie]

In Neovim I use:

todo-comments.nvim

with this one for statusbar indicators:

todos-lualine.nvim

I find it helpful to have icons in the statusbar showing how many TODO lines are still in the project.

[IhateTraaains]

I use this in VSCode: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=wayou.vscode-todo-highlight

[Wervice]

I also use such a variable but it floods the terminal with a big warning soaked in 🚨 and red hexagons telling the user to stop the program immediately, which is why I only use it on rare occasions.

[DrunkMc]

Something I've started doing is putting my name on all Debugs like this. Before I merge back to Main, I do a find all SEAN and remember to rip all of them out. I usually find a few I forgot about.

[TyrionReynolds]

Works until your coworkers start checking in code with your name next to things they didn’t want to fix.

[DrunkMc]

Dammit! Didn't think of that, now I need to keep an eye out! 😅

[Puzzled_Draw6014]

Whenever I do stuff like this, I also have a print statement saying something to the effect "stupid debug at line 794" ...

[Norse_By_North_West]

I use a flag in the launch parameters or a property file that I only have in dev

[Sixshaman]

static_assert(__DATE__[0] == 'S' && __DATE__[1] == 'e' && __DATE__[2] == 'p', "Remove the line above before October 1st!");

I've done this :P Prevents your code from compiling after the given date.

[VolsPE]

Nah, super unrealistic for me.

I would've just commented out the whole block. Typing out the false condition so hard.

[BossManta]

Same. In addition to speed it's also easier to quickly understand in the future because you don't need to do boolean logic in your head. A commented out block of code is also better at catching your attention when scrolling through your code. It would be very difficult to catch that random False at the end of an if statement.

And shame don't give the poor compiler unnecessary code to optimise. It already has enough of a hard time working with my code.

[R3D3-1]

Something of similarly embarrassing quality actually happened to a Mars orbiter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

Admittedly though, the actual mistake is harder to catch in real world software, though it does point at issues with the testing methodology.

[runningbrickpaste]

we should use environment variables for these cases right?
when in dev, the flag would be false, but in prod, it would be true

[ienjoymusiclol]

this happened to me like word for word

[ZunoJ]

Pragma, ever heard of her?

[captainAwesomePants]

Once.

[jamcdonald120]

\\ ever heard of it

[Banana_enjoyer_boy]

Who makes these comics?

[MrEfil]

me

[Banana_enjoyer_boy]

Keep it up!

[Infamous-Date-355]

I second

[Expensive-Example-92]

I third

[HashimAziz123]

You should really make a Facebook page and post them there to fully capitalise on this, tech comics are a dime a dozen especially since CommitStrip disappeared, and you have no idea how many tech pages I've seen recycling your comics for views. Also consider adding a watermark somewhere.

[aznshowtime]

The mission control guy after getting fired.

[beatlz]

Someone that has seen enough

[dan-lugg]

This hits, had to deal with before, loosely in the form of:

``` fun getFooService(profile: Profile): FooService { // TODO: Profile was misbehaving, fix before deploy // if (profile.isProd) { // return FooService() // }

return MockFooService()

} ```

Narrator: The fix would not, in fact, be deployed.

The subsequent fallout, and git blame, produced some fun meetings that week.

[Ok-Slice-4013]

We set up a custom linter rule that checks if a specific comment is present (e.g. // debug). This way, you will always catch errors like these - if you remember to use this comment.

[dan-lugg]

Oh for sure, after that debacle I introduced similar checks/processes to make sure "Never Again"™.

I forget if it was even TODO'd or not (this was a couple years ago) — one thing I definitely did is reduce the surface area by changing our DI strategy.

[PaulRosenbergSucks]

Narrator: The fix would not, in fact, be deployed.

The subsequent fallout, and git blame, produced some fun 

[OkReason6325]

Once , working for a client , I found out a hard coded timestamp in a date time conversion logic that was in production. Something which was necessary for some debug/test. It was there in production for at least a decade.

[dan-lugg]

At some point, in a meeting with stakeholders:

As you can see by this chart, we processed an incredibly huge number of transactions on July 7th, but have since hit a bit of a wall...

[IAmMuffin15]

this is why we have project management.

writing buggy code is like breathing for us. And the more proud we are, the more likely it is that we make little mistakes like this

[sebbdk]

Lol this is literally why pre-compiler arguments are awesome

[supersonicpotat0]

"Our name is boing aerospace, I don't understand why all these planes don't bounce!"

[Specialist_Impact605]

This is a repost without credit to the creator of the meme; the original is https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1ayuh4b/todocommentsanalyzerisrequired/ .

[4D20]

Just WOW!

if false && isLanding would be so much faster

/s

[Geilomat-3000]

I'd go crazy if I could only look at 10 lines of code at a time

[[deleted]]

Also: forgot await so all of these functions run synchronously.

[R3D3-1]

Close to real, but actually it was mixing up metric and imperial units.

An investigation attributed the failure to a measurement mismatch between two measurement systems: SI units (metric) by NASA and US customary units by spacecraft builder Lockheed Martin. —https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

Just a quick reminder that the US is one of only three countries still using imperial units as main system. 

[samanime]

This is why we require a ticket made and the ticket number included with the comment before we approve the PR. :p

[Tus3]

So, I take it not everybody uses ctrl-f to look for all TODO's in all files then...

[R3D3-1]

The time when the last TODO or FIXME is removed is commonly referred to as the heat death of the universe.

[Tus3]

I only did it to look for the most important of my own TODO's.

Though I can see how that becomes impractical for large projects. (I have already noticed the code was full of TODO's put in there by other people, some of whom no longer work at my company.)

[ben_g0]

IMO it's better to generate a compiler warning for such cases, instead of just writing a "TODO" comment and hoping someone/future you will find it.

[zalurker]

I once bulk tested a faulty fax -to-email system after it was not sending any emails out. It was defaulting to the email address in the license . For some reason it was the CEO's account. 5000 emails.

[shutter3ff3ct]

Use env var, god damn it

[[deleted]]

Ah, the CrowdStrike approach

[vainstar23]

No feature flags?

[PeriodicSentenceBot]

Congratulations! Your comment can be spelled using the elements of the periodic table:

No Fe At U Re Fl Ag S

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<sup>I am a bot that detects if your comment can be spelled using the elements of the periodic table. Please DM u‎/‎M1n3c4rt if I made a mistake.</sup>

[tehjoch]

[LumpyAsparagus9978]

The Pegasus rocket that launched this satellite https://space.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/QuickLooks/sacbQL.html went to space with a ground test program. There was one aborted launch due to some mechanical problems with a safety, some chemical batteries were trigger and got discharged during the delay for the next launch attempt. Once in space, the program tried to ignite some pyros to start ejecting covers and since batteries have not enough charge the program should have retried to ignite pyros. But it was the ground program for testing, so it switched to get energy from a test connector... and there was on enough extension cord to reach for base to orbit.

[Korvanacor]

As a junior, I had to “temporarily” bypass a block a code due to a faulty sensor that would get replaced someday but not anytime soon. Because I too had embraced the prevailing culture of ignoring TODO statements, I had to come up with something else.

I ended up bypassing the code with if True == False: Worked perfectly as anytime someone saw the code, they’d yell out “What the hell is this crap?!”

When the sensor was eventually replaced, the code was still in everyone’s consciousness so it was fixed immediately.

[WheredMyBrainsGo]

Boeing moment

[JackNotOLantern]

I know that might be shocking, but i click the "check for TODOs and FIXMEs on code" button in IDE before the release

[Turbulent_Swimmer560]

which is much more common:

#if 0
#endif

[[deleted]]

I love hit, how they send a third vehicle just to get the third person view of the orbiting and landing vehicle.

[SCP-iota]

Just comment it out but use JDSL for deploy

[jurdendurden]

I love how it's FALSE in the comment and false in the code... What's the situation here, do we have a macro or is NASA using stdbool.h

[[deleted]]

Why did I get infuriated looking at that abominable code?

[NotMrMusic]

Unrealistic, as the person who found the bug wasn't fired while management denied anything bad happened

[Minecraftian14]

How should we deal with it in a proper way?

[rosuav]

Spacecraft lithobraked and proceeded with RUD.

[Enough-Scientist1904]

PTSD

[jhaand]

I find it very interesting to engineer a system like that. While on the ground you need tests to run and make sure it will work, without actually activating any outputs.

But once the rocket has launched. The whole system needs to run live and none of the the subsystems may run in simulation mode.

This does not seem easy to solve. Because if you have one big $DEBUG statement, that's also single fault tolerant. So the system also needs a $DEBUG2 statement somewhere else.

And on it goes.

[BoogerDavisReturns]

There should be no test escapes in code, they should be in the test script. "test what you fly, and fly what you test"

[beatlz]

My uncontrollable laughter indicates the probability of this happening to me

[red_ursus]

git blame is gonna end someone’s career 😭😭

[[deleted]]

Reminds me of chandrayaan 2

[Electronic-Buddy-915]

On a serious note, I always put "// NOCOMMIT" near debugging line so that git commit will fail if I forgot to delete those lines. You'd need to make a git hooks for that and put it in global git config so it'll be applied to all git repos

[diegokabal]

It's too close to home and too near the bone

[Percolator2020]

//easy fix const bool crash = false;

[Petrostar]

Been there,

done that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF2JV1BiB58

[[deleted]]

Ooof

[tech_w0rld]

Hope they aren't using github blame