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Software Development

Why each TODO needs a Ticket

Everyone is aware that code with comments is a bad thing. It will inevitably decay, and future developers will be wondering if there is any need for it at all.

Every developer is aware of this. So they often remind themselves to follow up the commented out code with a TODO comment, to see that something needs to be done. Many IDEs support this idea and can show you all TODO comments in your current project.

However, I think using TODO comments to remind yourself of work that needs to be done is a very bad idea. Here is why.

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Blog Software Development

Choosing Your First Programming Language

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Blog Software Development

What is a Programming Language?

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Blog Software Development

Thinking Like a Computer – Data Types

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Blog Software Development

Thinking like a Computer – Algorithms

An algorithm is a description of a process that operates on a given input to produce a desired output. This definition is both very general and very similar to the description of what a computer does. The difference is that an algorithm is just a description of a process. It does not necessarily have to run on a computer. But algorithms are also sequences, and thus they are very well suited to be executed by a computer program.

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Blog Software Development

Thinking Like a Computer

Now you know how a computer works. The basic concepts are actually rather simple. Of course, actually building a computer is an incredibly complex undertaking. Fortunately, we programmers can focus on programming them.

In the last section we learned that a computer command basically performs these three task:

  1. Read the instruction and data from memory.
  2. Perform a calculation.
  3. Store the result at another address.

Then the computer continues with the next command. Then the next. And so on. This is the programming of the computer.