Keep A TODO LIST: (There is always lots of stuff TODO, so just do it ;)
_ _______ ____ _____ ____
| | /\|__ __/ __ \| __ \ / __ \
| | _____ ___ _ __ / \ | | | | | | | | | | | | ___ ___ _ __ ___
| |/ / _ \/ _ \ '_ \ / /\ \ | | | | | | | | | | | |/ __/ _ \| '_ ` _ \
| < __/ __/ |_) / ____ \| | | |__| | |__| | |__| | (__ (_) | | | | | |
|_|\_\___|\___| .__/_/ \_\_| \____/|_____/ \____(_)___\___/|_| |_| |_|
| |
|_|
Why?
The longer a code base exists the more likely it is that all external artifacts associated with it will disappear. I can't tell you how many wiki articles I've authored or edited over the years only to see them somehow get relegated and lost since the were not with the code. It gets to be disheartening. So a radical idea occurred to me. Why not just go back to keeping artifacts with the code. Before you fire up your blow torch to flame me, I'm not talking about abandoning all external systems. I'm talking about folks who may be in the terminal/vim/emacs all day long anyway going back to a tried and true method of tracking things that need to get done. Your milage may very. Comments or suggesitons welcome. Email me at senrabc@gmail.com.
Advantage Human (bad tennis pun)?
The advantages to using a text file based TODO are:
1. Your TODO items will get versioned right along with your code.
2. Your TODO list will always be human readable, ala Unix Philosophy.
3. Your text file will pretty much always be cross platform and future proof ;)
Examples:
Completed task logged on 3/1 and completed on 3/2
TODO: [x] (senrabc@gmail.com)2011-03-02 2011-03-01 Review Tim's pull request +TodoTxtTouch @github
High priority new task
TODO: [A] (senrabc@gmail.com) 0000-01-01 2017-04-20 This is the text of my TODO item. +HCVProject @gitrepo(location, etc..)
Medium priority new task
TODO: [B] (senrabc@gmail.com) 0000-01-01 2017-04-20 This is the text of my TODO item. +context @phonecall
Low priority task
TODO: [C] (senrabc@gmail.com) 0000-01-01 2017-04-20 This is the text of my TODO item. +context @webserver
TODO
References on Keeping TODO Files:
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=5262 https://github.com/ginatrapani/todo.txt-cli/wiki/The-Todo.txt-Format http://todotxt.com/