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I learned XXX as a placeholder for FIXME from a scientist who learned to write physics papers in the 1980s. I believe he learned it from someone trained in the
by ISL 10y ago
I learned XXX as a placeholder for FIXME from a scientist who learned to write physics papers in the 1980s. I believe he learned it from someone trained in the early 70s. It flows well in text: "The measurement performed by XXX in 1985 observed the same effect, but at the XXX-confidence level."
I solve the XXX-as-stand-in-for-foo degeneracy by adding priorities to my XXXs: XXXRC, XXXMA, XXXMI, for release-critical, major, and minor bugs.
A simple grep | wc shell script allowed rudimentary but extremely flexible bug-tracking when I was writing up my thesis.
- lionyo 10y agoFor journalists, the placeholder typically taught is "TK" for fact-checking later, as in "The youngest president was TK years old."
- jwilk 10y agoWhy "TK"?
- jwilliams 10y agoStands for "to come" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_come_(publishing) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_come_(publishing) Theory is that TK was a less common letter combination than TC.
- random_comment 10y ago(The agony of using 'TC' when you code in tcl, use tcpip, or are working with terminal control code)
- jcheng 10y agoIn case anyone is curious, like I was: $ grep -i tc /usr/share/dict/words | wc -l 1055 $ grep -i tk /usr/share/dict/words | wc -l 40