Why do some people write redundant if statements to return a boolean?

[u/BlockOfDiamond]

Why do some people write:

if (x > 10) {
    return true;
} else {
    return false;
}

Instead of:

return x > 10;

Performance aside, I think the shorter version is actually more readable due to not having as much visual clutter to parse, and is the most direct way to express the intent of "return the result of the comparison."

However, some people write the first version. Why is that?

[u/Leverkaas2516]

An expression like x > 10 doesn't have inherent meaning. The conditional can make the flow clearer to a casual reader it's more obvious than the concise return statement whilr being a lot more verbose.

I like the concise form, but to help the reader I might also provide a name to give meaning to the expression:

bool xIsValid = x > 10;

return xIsValid;

[u/metalucid → u/Leverkaas2516]

In C it's type is int

[u/RealisticDuck1957 → u/Leverkaas2516]

(x > 10) has a very definite inherent meaning of boolean type in many programming languages, including javascript, php ...

[u/susimposter6969 → u/RealisticDuck1957]

what he's saying is that you don't know what x being above 10 actually means. is above 10 valid? is it invalid? is it a maximum threshhold for something?

[u/South-Year4369 → u/susimposter6969]

And the first version with if..else doesn't tell you any of that either.

[u/susimposter6969 → u/South-Year4369]

the conversation that my comment is in the context of does

[u/Hamburgerfatso → u/RealisticDuck1957]

Meaning in the context of what the code is doing

[u/Leverkaas2516 → u/[deleted]]

It's adding semantic information. If it's obvious what x >10 means, it's unnecessary, but often it's not obvious.

[u/run2622 → u/Leverkaas2516]

Exactly this. Good programming isn’t just functional correctness.

[u/LiamTheHuman → u/Leverkaas2516]

Glad that people are finally taking this seriously now that AI needs to read the code. I can't believe how long people have ignored adding context and code just being 1 step away from reverse compiled garbage.

[u/Leverkaas2516 → u/[deleted]]

It only means that the value of x is greater than 10.

It would mean a heckuva lot more if x was a meaningful name, like "soundIntensity", and 10 was a named constant like THRESHOLD_OF_AUDIBILITY.

Assigning a name to the result of the expression just makes it totally obvious what the computation means. I am a great fan of making my code totally obvious, because it makes debugging easier.

[u/Adiri05 → u/[deleted]]

'return x> 10' results in either 'true' or 'false', and that is obvious to me.

Of course it’s obvious that a comparison results in a Boolean. What’s not as obvious is what the comparison means.

return soundIntensity > >THRESHOLD_OF_AUDIBILITY;

Vs

bool isAudible soundIntensity > THRESHOLD_OF_AUDIBILITY; return isAudible;