this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2026
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Programming

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Is it a bad practice to replace compiler warnings with a bunch of TODO notes? (lemmy.zip)
submitted 14 hours ago by SpiderUnderUrBed@lemmy.zip to c/programming@programming.dev
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I am using rust, but this applies to many other languages, I get warnings like, dead code, unused variables, and etc, and while I remove most of them, there are some im not sure of, I like running my program and there being 0 warnings, or 0 warnings as i scroll down my code, so for things im unsure of, i mark them so the compiler doesn't put warnings there. I also add comments, starting with TODO:, it has some information about what to think about when i revisit it, also the todo's gets highlighed in my IDE with my extension, but is this bad practice?

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[–] Kissaki@programming.dev 4 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Think about whether TODOs will be revisited, and how you can guarantee that. What do you gain and lose by replacing warnings with TODOs.

In my projects and work projects, I advocate for:

  • Warnings and TODOs are fine only in initial development before release/stability and in feature branches during development
  • TODOs are almost never revisited, so document state and information instead of hypotheticals; document opportunities over TODOs, document known shortcomings and risks, etc
  • If there is good reason to keep and ignore warnings, document the reasoning, and we can update our CI/Jenkins quality gate to a new baseline of accepted warnings instead of suppressing them (this pretty much never happens)

Dotnet warning suppression attributes have a Justification property. Editorconfig severity, disabling, suppression can have a comment.

If it's your own project and you know when and how you will revisit, what do you gain by dropping the warning? A no-warning, but then you have TODOs with the same uncertainties?