As with anything, the key here is to strike the right balance. Sometimes the code behind the ‘if’ test will be worth factoring out and sometimes it’s better to

As with anything, the key here is to strike the right balance. Sometimes the code behind the ‘if’ test will be worth factoring out and sometimes it’s better to keep it simple. Impossible to say what the line is, as it depends on the team, the language, etc. But in relation to the actual problem of legibility to a new developer still building up the mental model of the code, this is an area where tooling can help. You ought to be able to view the called-method’s body with a keystroke, without losing the current context, in an IDE or a code review tool. I’m sure some IDEs do have such features. Yes this is harder in some languages than others but in general it’s too bad these sorts of features aren’t built in to Github and Gerrit as well.