Not the first time this comes up…
TL;DR: I’d prefer a more agnostic minus sign for negative duration.
I’m not a native speaker but it seems obvious that ago only applies when comparing with the present. I’d personally prefer earlier/later or before/after as more neutral ways.
Even if you’re dictionary-pedantic and says that ago the right word for any date in the past, explain this:
In short, Coda prints any negative duration as ago.
But here’s the thing: we’re looking at how Coda words something that is heavily contextual.
Here’s another case:
Now, none of the words mentioned so far are proper to describe the amount of time you spent over/under the estimate. I can think of less/more, over/under, faster/slower(?).
There are so many use cases that the most sensible would be to just print a minus sign, then leave the choice of words, if needed at all, to the user.