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 1 day 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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[–] vext01@feddit.uk 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It's not ideal.

Depending on the kind of warning, you may be able to re-write the code in question including a 'todo!()' to capture the "i need to think about this" case.

This way you get a crash at runtime. This is preferable to continuing execution with incorrect computation.

It's best just to fix the warnings ASAP. They are usually trivial anyway.