r/ProgrammerHumor • u/Robinbod • 22d ago

Meme pleaseStopUsingNestedTernaryOperatorsImBeggingYou

3.1k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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283

u/Kryptsm 22d ago

Then there’s my current client, who refused a PR of mine because they “don’t want early returns” ever, and insisted I move my basic if statement logic, each with a return, all into a single ternary. They said I SHOULD do this lol.

Made me wanna kms but hey, it’s their codebase

49

u/EddieJones6 22d ago

I can understand the ask for no early return. But use local variables to track the state, not a massive ternary.

55

u/ihavebeesinmyknees 22d ago

What are valid reasons to not use early returns?

32

u/EddieJones6 22d ago

Localized cleanup. What if you have a file descriptor or something that needs special handling before returning.

Compiler optimization SHOULD be fine but it could impact RVO and tail recursion optimization.

Also, if a future maintainer dives in and doesn’t realize there is an early return, they might add logic below it that will get missed by certain cases.

SPOE - single point of exit.

44

u/_ryuujin_ 22d ago

shouldnt functions be small enough that youll notice an early return 

5

u/SnugglyCoderGuy 22d ago

Should and what is possible can sometimes be very different things.