Visual Studio ToDo.Who's using?

Question

I'm interesting with statistic and motivation of using task list in VS. Why are you use it or not? Some people i asked even want a tool, that can synchronize VS ToDo with Outlook. What do you think?

Answer 1

I use TODO sparingly - only when I have something that I'm not the master of (something another team-member is working on etc.). I treat it as I treat bugs - max 5 at any time.

If I need scaffolding - I create temporary classes with Fake as a prefix in the class-name.

I guess, I don't want my production code to also act as my scrum-board/task-list.

Answer 2

One thing to be wary of about Task Lists in VS is that they are stored in the .suo file, which (I believe) most people tend to exclude from source control.

Answer 3

I used TODO for two purposes:

1. To mark enhancements that can be done at a later stage. So whenever, there is slack time, you can pick one of them out of your pending TODO list.
2. Things that are still need to be done while I am coding - so that I can re-visit those places and fix them. This is something like bookmarks except they are visible to other folks even if I forgot to fix them.

I use TODO comment syntax - it's there in code and not in .suo file as mentioned by Benjol.

Answer 4

IMO you can use Todos for:

1. Remember that you must do something like "Todo: implement this interface"
2. To mark a line/block of code as instruction for another coder if your are code in a team like "Todo: you can use foo instead of bar because ..."
3. If you review your code you can mark any code that he can be improved like "Todo: use Linq instead of foreach"

You can replace the default tasklist-window from visual studio with plugins:

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/94864/tasklist-replacement-for-visual-studio
• http://genne-develop.com/