It’s taking me about 3 months to finally come up with a strong opinion about single line conditionals, but I now have a firm position:

“In the long run, it’s a bad idea to drop the brackets and put a conditional or iterator on a single line.”

Essentially sort of thing:

public function testResults(score:Number):void
{
    if(score < MIN_PASS) sendNotification(YOU_FAIL)
    else sendNotification(YOU_PASS)
}

Should always be this:

public function testResults(score:Number):void
{
    if(value < MIN_PASS)
    {
        sendNotification(YOU_FAIL)
    }
    else
    {
        sendNotification(YOU_PASS)
    }
}

Even when writing in a language that doesn’t use brackets, i.e. so called pure block languages like Python and Visual Basic, proper formatting should be used rather than single lines. If a language does use brackets, there is no excuse not to use them.

My argument follows this logic:

“Since debugging code is 20 times harder than writing it, by that definition you won’t be smart enough to find errors in clever code.”

(more…)

Here’s an online conversation with a good friend of mine on IM!

oculart:      hows it going with you these days
ghostmonk:  good man
ghostmonk: busy
oculart:     that’s the word on the streets isn’t it
ghostmonk: Myron and I are making this crazy ass site
oculart:     sweet, for who
ghostmonk: same one we’ve been working on for the last 8 months
ghostmonk: for this at risk women’s group in Winnipeg
ghostmonk: funded by ***
oculart:      ah cool, is an interactive story?
ghostmonk: no
ghostmonk: it’s a content site
ghostmonk: interactive story would be awesome
ghostmonk: nice idea
ghostmonk: I can show you
ghostmonk: beta.**********.com
ghostmonk: runs completely off a cms
ghostmonk: that’s why there is dummy content in there right now
ghostmonk: there is still a ton of work left to do
oculart:     alright let me check it out
oculart:      i like the resizing browser animation snap thing
ghostmonk: There’s more there than meets the eye
ghostmonk: the content is completely managed
ghostmonk: there is a back end
oculart:     do they have a lot of content they are going to be adding
ghostmonk: I guess so
oculart:     i don’t really believe in having cms for a lot of sites
oculart:     seems like a waste of programming time unless content is updated hourly
oculart:      I think it’s foolish when more resources are used on building a back end application when its just as easy to republish updated content unless it needs to be dynamic content (more…)