I am working on a fairly big project and got the task to do some translations for it. There were tons of labels that haven't been translated and while I was digging through the code I found this little piece of code

//TODO translations


This made me think about the sense of these comments to yourself (and others?) because I got the feeling that most developers after they get a certain piece of code done and it does what it's supposed to do they never look at this until they have to maintain it or add new functionality. So that this TODO will be lost for a long time.

Does it make sense to write this comments or should they be written on a whiteboard/paper/something else where they remain in the focus of developers?

I tend to use // todo comments for things that have to happen, but I can't do immediately.

I also make sure that I chase up on them - I search for them (Visual Studio has a nice feature where it will list such comments for you) and ensure that things are done.

But, as you say, not everyone is diligent about them and like many comments, they tend to rot over time.

I would say this is more of a personal preference - so long as you document what needs to be done and chase up on it, it doesn't matter if it is in // todo, postit notes or a whiteboard (where they can also end up not being actioned).
