All Questions
Tagged with coding-stylelanguage-agnostic
24 questions
0votes
5answers
247views
The cases where returning Bools as literal expressions is a better option
Most people would return Bools as follows: bananas(color) { return (color = "yellow") } and not as literal expressions; that is, not this way: bananas(color) { if (color = "...
- 501
0votes
2answers
110views
Negation of sameness is confirmation of difference [closed]
De Morgan's laws: the negation of a disjunction is the conjunction of the negations; and the negation of a conjunction is the disjunction of the negations; or, the same: not (A or B) = not A and not B;...
- 501
10votes
5answers
752views
If-else ladder that is supposed to catch all conditions - should a redundant final clause be added?
This is a thing I'm doing a lot lately. Example: setCircle(circle, i, { current }) { if (i == current) { circle.src = 'images/25CE.svg' circle.alt = 'Now picking' } else if (...
- 4,519
2votes
1answer
293views
Guard block moved to the bottom [closed]
Sometimes it is a good idea to have a guard block: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/157413 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_(computer_science) Guard block guards against special ...
- 501
75votes
10answers
30kviews
Is it good practice to replace division with multiplication when possible?
Whenever I need division, for example, condition checking, I would like to refactor the expression of division into multiplication, for example: Original version: if(newValue / oldValue >= ...
- 5,750
2votes
2answers
655views
Get value from UI element or from variable
I had a debate with a friend and I'm looking for a way to resolve it and decide which approach is better for maintenance and whether there's some consensus about a best practice regarding it: If an ...
- 1,273
11votes
6answers
1kviews
What to return if something failed, rather than doing something 'random'? [duplicate]
Say I re-implement a method for finding the position of a string within a string. So I get either the position which is an integer, or a "magic number" like -1. I see this pattern in so many ...
- 219
21votes
5answers
3kviews
Should non-trivial conditional statements be moved to the initialization section of loops?
I got this idea from this question on stackoverflow.com The following pattern is common: final x = 10;//whatever constant value for(int i = 0; i < Math.floor(Math.sqrt(x)) + 1; i++) { //...do ...
- 595
0votes
0answers
40views
Functions inside conditionals [duplicate]
Is it a poor idea for readability or maintainability to use functions in conditionals as in the following example? if (move_uploaded_file($file['tmp_name'], $destinationFile)) { // Do work } ...
- 1,908
0votes
3answers
151views
Handling source code table alignment
Sometimes there is need to have tables (big or small) in source code. ItemType const SomeTable[] = { // id name min max ITEM( 3, "Foo", 70, 180), ITEM(13, "Bar", 30, 50), ITEM(...
- 169
-2votes
2answers
7kviews
How to really understand programming? [duplicate]
I have started to learn to program. I am interested in it and dont mind how long it takes to learn. But I am using books to start out and I find that there are some things I get and some things I have ...
15votes
3answers
957views
Does usage of advanced language features decrease maintainability? [duplicate]
On a code review, I've stumbled on an interesting idea, which I can't properly judge alone. Is it OK to improve readability of code by means of not widely known language syntax? When the original ...
- 860
5votes
4answers
14kviews
How can I stop myself overwriting member variables with 'new' ones?
The bulk of my programming experience has been with C++ and (shudder) FORTRAN (I'm a scientist not a programmer as such, but I do my best). I've recently started using python extensively and find it ...
- 151
26votes
11answers
2kviews
Maintenance wise, is `else while` without intervening braces considered safe?
Is else while without intervening braces considered "safe" maintenance wise? Writing if-else code without braces like below... if (blah) foo(); else bar(); ...carries a risk because the lack ...
- 8,178
140votes
18answers
53kviews
Is there an excuse for short variable names?
This has become a large frustration with the codebase I'm currently working in; many of our variable names are short and undescriptive. I'm the only developer left on the project, and there isn't ...
