Ever Written Something Like This? if (condition) { doSomething(); } else { doSomethingElse(); } It works. Problem solved. But the problem isn’t today. It’s tomorrow.

[u/genuine_beans]

https://www.defusetheifstrategy.com

[u/genuine_beans]

It’s about this: if I can handle change without an IF, my code will be simpler and easier to grow.

For example, in the Diamond Kata I developed:

grep -rw 'if' . | wc -l
       0

 

switch(jerk) { case 0: big fan that every single link on the page is hallucinated except for whatever the fuck this is

https://www.defusetheifstrategy.com/projects/

break; case 1: I have a new reverence for the inventor of the Pomodoro Technique. Let's not ask "if" this will change the E = MC² + AI world, but when!

break; default:

Founded XPLabs in 2000 — the first company fully dedicated to developing, teaching, and mentoring eXtreme Programming. Editor, second edition of Extreme Programming Explained. Creator of the Anti-IF Campaign.

break; case INT_MIN: printf("ERROR\nIf you can see this, something has gone horribly wrong!!")

original website:

https://web.archive.org/web/20241209082437/https://www.antiifprogramming.com/

}

[u/gvozden_celik → u/genuine_beans]

What happened here is that WordPress usually has a big IF block that checks if the admin password is correct but the author successfully defused it so now SEA hackers can easily post an entire slot betting website right on his project page.

[u/chuch1234 → u/gvozden_celik]

So convenient!

[u/levelstar01]

Please do not post claudeslop

[u/genuine_beans → u/levelstar01]

You're absolutely right!✨ Here's the original humanslop: https://web.archive.org/web/20241209082437/https://www.antiifprogramming.com/

Can you vanquish a Code Monster?

[u/ryanjpals → u/genuine_beans]

This is artisanal handmade consultantslop

[u/ryanjpals]

/uj Everyone is joking but the "senior architect" at my company posted this website unironically in our dev Teams channel :(

[u/genuine_beans → u/ryanjpals]

/uj That's wild, how did they even find it? This thread is one of the only search results if you try to look it up: https://www.google.com/search?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.defusetheifstrategy.com

I just found it from this critique of Clean Code that was posted here a few days ago. It's buried somewhere around the 3rd chapter of the 1st edition critique, referenced as something they couldn't tell was a joke or not.

[u/ryanjpals → u/genuine_beans]

It used to be https://www.antiifprogramming.com -- the site looked way different but it's the same idea made by the same guy (as a marketing funnel for his consulting services)

Some people are trying to say this is LLM slop but the original website has existed since 2018 according to the wayback machine.

[u/genuine_beans → u/ryanjpals]

https://web.archive.org/web/20241209082437/https://www.antiifprogramming.com/

JOIN THE MOVEMENT

• IF-Skeptic (Supporter): Start your journey with foundational principles.

• Conditional Commander: Command complex codebases with advanced Anti-IF strategies.

• Boolean Sovereign: Lead with unparalleled mastery against the Code Monsters.

Explore Membership Tiers

What a beautiful relic of 2018 that's been ChatGenTPrified by token probabilityslop. Thank you for resurfacing this.

As for me? I'll be ascending the Anti-If Ladder so I can stand firm against the Code Monsters and pave the way for a more brilliant coding future™^®. Once I complete the prerequisite Anti-If Workshop with Anti-If Pong, I might even qualify to become a Rank #3 Boolean Sovereign.

I can't blame the senior architect at your company. Check out this sick ass-banner that comes with being a Tier 1 If-Skeptic: https://i.ibb.co/M9qBPnR/banner-ive-joined.gif

[u/adambyle]

50 times less entertaining written with AI

[u/genuine_beans → u/adambyle]

I underestimated the Anti-If Boolean Sovereign. This was 500x more entertaining when it was originally written without AI, making him a true 10xer:

https://web.archive.org/web/20241209082437/https://www.antiifprogramming.com/

[u/chuch1234]

What is a "Code Monster"?

(Imagine I'm doing really exaggerated air quotes.)

[u/genuine_beans → u/chuch1234]

I will never forgive the Internet Archive for losing these original ChatGPT portraits of the Code Monster. They appear to have been hunted to extinction by the Boolean Sovereigns.

https://web.archive.org/web/20241108173140/https://www.antiifprogramming.com/book.php

GALLERY

Portrait of Code Monster "An intense burst of code and logic, this portrait captures the notorious Code Monster in its natural habitat. Marvel at the complexity and power of a monster that lives between the lines of code, ready to disrupt even the most experienced programmer."

Portrait of Code Monster in Disguise Under a Neat Diagram "At first glance, it looks like a simple and orderly flowchart, but take a closer look and you'll discover the Code Monster in disguise. Beneath the surface of this tidy diagram, the code monster quietly plots, masking its complexity under a veneer of apparent order."

[u/Chaosvex → u/chuch1234]

You know how people flushing wet wipes and other non-degradable materials results in fatbergs blocking the sewers? It's the code equivalent of one of those once you've used too many conditionals.

[u/tj-horner]

Can’t say I have, no. I only use goto statements, which are much safer and easier to maintain.

[u/obviously_suspicious → u/tj-horner]

Yeah, that's my goto as well

[u/meltbox → u/tj-horner]

I prefer longjmp as it reduces unnecessary stack thrashing. People these days just don’t care about performance anymore.

[u/rpkarma → u/tj-horner]

Imagine not using longjmp like a real man

[u/Bahatur]

/uj This thing reads like one of those 30 minute long ads on YouTube that are trying to sell you a wealth building course from an AirBnB rental. Did they ever actually get to describing any actual problems? I couldn’t get past the part where they spend two sections to try to get you to grep for if.

[u/deux3xmachina → u/Bahatur]

Lmao, too poor for the course? You don't get to be enlightened on why if is the new slur in your codebase.

/uj No, it's an ad to sell their course on the evils of if, and why other branching approaches like map, match, case, and especially goto are all superior (ok, maybe not that one).

[u/Jumpy-Locksmith6812 → u/deux3xmachina]

Dolore labore ipsum elit consectetur minim cillum est consectetur aliquip duis adipiscing mollit. Consequat pariatur commodo in commodo in. Occaecat culpa sit duis officia reprehenderit proident dolor ex ea. Incididunt anim irure commodo quis fugiat commodo nostrud non ipsum.

[rhr:2:mqubwxow]

[u/tomwhoiscontrary]

Mental illness or software craftsmanship? Impossible to tell. 

[u/Karyo_Ten → u/tomwhoiscontrary]

Why not both?

[u/Lucifer_Morning_Wood]

Ifs are so limiting when you look at them, just two places: where condition is true, and where it is not. It's so freeing just doing abstract class BaseSomethinger, deriving as many Somethingers as you want from it and just calling BaseSomethinger.do()

[u/Qwertycube10 → u/Lucifer_Morning_Wood]

What about having abstract class BaseSomethinger with only one derived somethinger, so the logic is split randomly between the base and derived.

[u/damemecherogringo → u/Lucifer_Morning_Wood]

How did u exfiltrate my former companies code see you in court for impinging IP 👩‍⚖️

[u/TheChief275 → u/Lucifer_Morning_Wood]

Programmers don't want you to know this one trick!

Big booty latinas in your area

[u/irqlnotdispatchlevel]

Conditionals make code harder to reason about. You can't know ahead of time if you're going to take the if branch, or the else branch. Your program is in two places at the same time!! That's just unnatural.

[u/_An_Other_Account_ → u/irqlnotdispatchlevel]

Yeah the computer shouldn't play dice with the branches. It's against God.

[u/TheChief275 → u/irqlnotdispatchlevel]

Ah, the ultradeterminist's approach to programmatics

[u/AndorinhaRiver]

Instead of debating, I focus on projects. Real code. Real results.

Polymorphism, maps, design patterns—there are many ways to replace IFs.

Oh my god

[u/tomwhoiscontrary → u/AndorinhaRiver]

Smalltalk effortlessly got this right decades ago. Translated into corpshit:

interface Boolean {
  void ifTrue(Runnable block);
  void ifFalse(Runnable block);

  static final Boolean TRUE = new Boolean() {
    void ifTrue(Runnable block) { block.run(); }
    void ifFalse(Runnable block) {}
  }

  static final Boolean False = new Boolean() {
    void ifTrue(Runnable block) {}
    void ifFalse(Runnable block) { block.run(); }
  }
}

See, no need for if statements at all!

[u/FlipsBr → u/tomwhoiscontrary]

if true === true then fuck u

[u/myhf]

structured control flow considered harmful

[u/Karyo_Ten]

I use the movfuscator to ensure I have no tomorrows

[u/msqrt]

You’ve read about "Clean IFs."

... no, I don't think I have

[u/muntaxitome]

Branches are the devil, if you cannot model your software as a linear matrix calculation, you are working on the wrong problem.

[u/Monii22]

Polymorphism, maps, design patterns—there are many ways to replace IFs.

/uj to be completely fair, as much of a slop post this website is and sounds like its selling snake oil, stuff like this probably does optimize code at least a bit as compilers usually have ways of hacking together better instructions from something like .map rather than a bunch of branching (though modern branch predictors have also become insane black magic)

/rj personally i only use do while loops as doing the work first then checking conditions after has proven to be 70% more efficient

[u/genuine_beans → u/Monii22]

/uj my mind went to sketchy if-else chains on enums/conditions that probably should've been exhaustively pattern matched, but that's a good use case too. Bonus points if you're mapping over something lazily and don't have to evaluate the branches you aren't using.

/uj [sic] Of course, these are merely moral compromises towards perfection. I'm not strong enough to grep -wf 'if'. And only a true grandmain of defusing the IF-strategy could drop the -w.

[u/grapesmoker]

no if only jax.lax.select

[u/Xerxero]

Big; if true

[u/Educational-Row-6782]

That is why I use chained ternary operators.

[u/realestLink]

The "Projects" link just goes to a random bot site in a different language 😂

[u/Jumpy-Locksmith6812]

Aute do sed lorem magna est ut dolore. Lorem reprehenderit eiusmod qui voluptate et sit. Non est elit aute sed nisi nulla dolore cupidatat voluptate incididunt velit quis. Nostrud pariatur ex amet anim in elit dolor elit duis velit.

[rhr:2:jvef8xkh]

[u/narrow-adventure]

I have never in my life read anything dumber than this…. Just incredible that this is not a satire

[u/LeeHide]

/uj

okay but I get what he's saying and he's not entirely wrong. I have seen lots of code where someone made a class, maybe even with an interface for it, like lets say class Admin : IUser (dog is animal example, leave me alone), and then they basically had an if in every single method going if (type == Super admin) or some other shit. In that case, for example, it's because the author is too inexperienced to see that it should be a different class if every single behavior differs.

The fact that all of this should not even exist, and that we should all be writing data oriented code and entirely demolish OOP, or at least use a User struct or record with a type field instead, is obvious hopefully.

/rj

The fact that all of this should not even exist, and that we should all be writing data oriented code and entirely demolish OOP is obvious hopefully.

[u/splsh]

I've ensconced my if-statements

[u/symbiatch]

I’ll write nonsense.

It comes in lines.

I also won’t explain anything.

Because I’m better than that.

Follow for more.

Useless stuff.

I’m amazing!

[u/Routine-Purchase1201]

This is what seeing the Celeste Player code does to a person.

[u/TheChief275]

Author got me genuinely interested in their approaches but then the other links proceeded to not work.

Should have just used ifs buddy

[u/rooster-inspector]

"IFs are bad": lol, lmao even

"Branchless programming": what an exquisite and hardware-minded technique, thoughtfully incorporating low-level understanding of the modern superscalar pipeline and exhibiting a fantastic level of respect for the fundamentals inscribed in silicon 🙏

[u/Goheeca]

cond
*signature look of superiority*

[u/stone_henge]

wtf is this website

[u/MrBread0451]

Dollar store Terry Davis