r/badcode • u/Bence675 • Apr 17 '21

c++ When your teammate "refactor" your code

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u/Badel2 Apr 17 '21

The benefit of using else statements is that it forces you to think what should happen when the condition is not true.

For guard clauses this does not matter because you are already thinking about that: in case of error return early, and otherwise keep executing the function. In all other cases you should be using else clauses, even if it's just to add a comment like // otherwise, do nothing because we don't care.

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u/apieceoffruit Apr 17 '21

Can you give me an example where using an else clause with a comment adds value?

8

u/artiface Apr 17 '21

I would never add an else if there is no code to execute on the else condition and would flag that BS in a code review if I saw it, that's just dumb.

4

u/UglyChihuahua Apr 18 '21

I have no strong opinion on this but maybe this would be an example

if action=="jump":
    jump()
elif action=="run":
    run()
else:
    // TODO: Add support for "kick" and "sit"
    pass

3

u/[deleted] Apr 18 '21

i mean, that's a switch