> is it the same as commenting out the code within the block

yes

What I'd like to do is deprecate it post-3.0 and then remove it. We could remove it now, just means transpec would need to convert:

``` ruby
it  do
  pending {
    # blah
  }
end
```

to

``` ruby
it do
  skip
  # blah
end
```

Hrmmm that's probably fine actually, then we could remove it now.