4 ms·

yeah, I'm not even sure what's suppose to be confusing? That the "constant" comes first, before the comparison operator?

mikekchar 11y ago
I think he's complaining that it doesn't read like English. You aren't testing null, you are testing the variable. There is an implication that the subject of the "sentence" will come first. Of course English order is idiomatic in most programming languages, but I don't think that means you can't have other idioms if there is a reason. I find it amusing that he complains about abusing fluent interfaces (making it read like English for no real benefit), but doesn't realize that he's doing the same thing here. That's why you have coding standards on your team. People agree on the idioms they use. Some people need to be told that it isn't an idiom if only one person likes it, though ;-)
mc808 11y ago
Yoda speak, it is confusing like. Most people think "if the variable is not null" rather than "if null, the variable is not". It's easy enough to adapt to the style if it's used consistently throughout a code base, but that effort yields no benefits in most languages.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  Most people think "if the variable is not null" Only because this is how people are traditionally taught to think. This can be untaught easily enough.
  - firethief 11y ago
    So you can unteach your developers to think... for what purpose?
jpfed 11y ago
I am not sure, but here's my guess. If I say (A != B), people may think of this as being equivalent to saying that there's a property we care about- being not equal to B- and we are checking whether A has that property. If I say (Joe != null), then we are saying that there is a property "being not null" and we are checking whether Joe has that property. Feels pretty natural. If I say (null != Joe), then we are saying that there is a property "being not Joe" and we are checking whether null has that property. This is pretty amusing way to think. In the lines after one says something like if (null == myArgument) throw new ArgumentNullException("myArgument") one may proceed with assurance that some properties of null must hold :-) The distinction between null and not-null is so generally useful that I could imagine making a partially-applied function like NotNull, and applying that to Joe (and many other objects). Would NotJoe get much use other than applying it to null? Probably not.
kilink 11y ago
For me it's not that it's confusing, it's annoying to read because it indicates that the programmer didn't actually take the time to learn the language, and is instead writing it as C/PHP something else where expressions in if statements don't need to be explicitly boolean (the examples in the article are Java). If they wrote that, what else do they not understand about the language?
- rileymat2 11y ago
  What if it is 0 but not null? I write in a few different languages throughout a typical week. It is nice to have some explicit statements when juggling between them. I know them very well, but it is still tricky when going back and forth.
  - kilink 11y ago
    That also wouldn't even compile. I also write in multiple languages, and for languages for which this is an issue I use a linter. This isn't even an issue in C if you compile everything with the appropriate flags (-Wall or -Wparentheses).

mikekchar 11y ago

I think he's complaining that it doesn't read like English. You aren't testing null, you are testing the variable. There is an implication that the subject of the "sentence" will come first. Of course English order is idiomatic in most programming languages, but I don't think that means you can't have other idioms if there is a reason. I find it amusing that he complains about abusing fluent interfaces (making it read like English for no real benefit), but doesn't realize that he's doing the same thing here. That's why you have coding standards on your team. People agree on the idioms they use. Some people need to be told that it isn't an idiom if only one person likes it, though ;-)

mc808 11y ago

Yoda speak, it is confusing like. Most people think "if the variable is not null" rather than "if null, the variable is not". It's easy enough to adapt to the style if it's used consistently throughout a code base, but that effort yields no benefits in most languages.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago
Most people think "if the variable is not null" Only because this is how people are traditionally taught to think. This can be untaught easily enough.
- firethief 11y ago
  So you can unteach your developers to think... for what purpose?

jpfed 11y ago

I am not sure, but here's my guess. If I say (A != B), people may think of this as being equivalent to saying that there's a property we care about- being not equal to B- and we are checking whether A has that property. If I say (Joe != null), then we are saying that there is a property "being not null" and we are checking whether Joe has that property. Feels pretty natural. If I say (null != Joe), then we are saying that there is a property "being not Joe" and we are checking whether null has that property. This is pretty amusing way to think. In the lines after one says something like if (null == myArgument) throw new ArgumentNullException("myArgument") one may proceed with assurance that some properties of null must hold :-) The distinction between null and not-null is so generally useful that I could imagine making a partially-applied function like NotNull, and applying that to Joe (and many other objects). Would NotJoe get much use other than applying it to null? Probably not.

kilink 11y ago

For me it's not that it's confusing, it's annoying to read because it indicates that the programmer didn't actually take the time to learn the language, and is instead writing it as C/PHP something else where expressions in if statements don't need to be explicitly boolean (the examples in the article are Java). If they wrote that, what else do they not understand about the language?

rileymat2 11y ago
What if it is 0 but not null? I write in a few different languages throughout a typical week. It is nice to have some explicit statements when juggling between them. I know them very well, but it is still tricky when going back and forth.
- kilink 11y ago
  That also wouldn't even compile. I also write in multiple languages, and for languages for which this is an issue I use a linter. This isn't even an issue in C if you compile everything with the appropriate flags (-Wall or -Wparentheses).