Do you have examples of comments or todos that were difficult to interpret?

Question

I'm writing a chapter of my dissertation that deals with contextual cues and I'm looking for good examples of comments (or todo comments) where it's obvious that whoever wrote them had some knowledge that he didn't bother sharing with future readers, making them difficult to interpret.

Examples from publicly available code would be especially appreciated!

I am looking for both actual comments (header or on a piece of code) and todos.

Answer 1

//todo: Fix me

Answer 2

// TODO:  update TODOs

Answer 3

I think the most useless TODO I've encountered the most would be:

//TODO: fix this

Answer 4

Check out The Daily WTF, especially the CodeSOD section. They should have something that fits the bill.

Answer 5

I don't like TODOs that don't explain the problem, but only say what should be done instead, like

// TODO: better use mergesort...

Answer 6

One I ran across on my current project, written by a contractor that is no longer there:

//TODO: Temporary fix until we can solve this problem

and of course no mention of the original problem... thanks!

Answer 7

// this broke something
// *actual code/santity check that made everything secure here*

The problem here of course being, commenting was used to solve the wrong problem. Instead of solving the problem, the code which brought the problem into being recognised was commented instead.

The squeaky wheel doesn't get the oil, the mechanic instead gets given earmuffs and a blindfold.

where it's obvious that whoever wrote them had some knowledge that he didn't bother sharing with future readers

Here, its obvious whoever wrote them had a lack of knowledge in one field, and instead of diagnosing the problem in their own code, .... proliferated the the breaks responsibility, and suppressed the warning :/

Answer 8

//sorry about this

Answer 9

Here's an example of a comment that should have been paid closer attention, but wasn't.

MD_Update(&m,buf,j); /* purify complains */

The author of the comment was trying to communicate that the line of code caused the Purify tool to generate a warning. The line of code was removed because of the warning anyway, and that's why Debian and Ubuntu users had to update their SSL keys last May, after the line was added back in (hopefully with a more strongly-worded comment).

Explanation from an expert here.

Answer 10

// someguy: Neato!  I can ...
// otherguy: Not so neato.  That doesn't work and here's why

Answer 11

// Do dis ting!

Really. Used throughout the app, too.

Answer 12

Two that I myself didn't find but were found by a friend while working with an open source project.

Example 1

// Drunk, fix later

Example 2

// Almost always true
return true;

Answer 13

    //TODO there must be a better way to do this

    // TODO: This is UGGGLLY

And of course, the succinct

    // TODO

Answer 14

A few skimmed out of the Perl debugger:

# Here begin the unreadable code.  It needs fixing.

# XXX I have no idea what this is doing. Yet.

# XXX It behooves an OS/2 expert to write the necessary documentation for this!

Answer 15

//TODO: Find the bug

While the code was working perfectly fine

Answer 16

Found this one just the other day:

//TODO: or not TODO.  That is the question.

Answer 17

I keep meeting comments on the form

// TODO: Find out why this doesn't work.

Answer 18

I found this gem from code I wrote about 16 months ago

### You don't want to use SQL merge (trust me)

Problem is the code that ran under that comment ran a SQL script that used MERGE. Now I'm working through the fact I don't trust myself.

Answer 19

Found this in my own code once: never got around to fixing it.

//TODO: FIX ME
//TODO: I don't know how TODO this.