Placeholder is one of my least favourite terms, not least because, in code, it has a tendency to mean both “permanent feature” and “oh, I’ll do it properly later”.

By all means do it the simplest way possible — in fact, we’ll have words if you don’t — but please don’t abandon your professional self-respect: it’s the placeholder stuff that will haunt you at 2am in three years’ time, not the polished production code you slaved over for three days to refactor into shining elegance.

I should know. Not only have I written my share of placeholder code… but an article called “placeholder” is just asking for trouble.