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You want a zero-slice because it’s a simpler base case in almost any even mildly complex algorithm. Without empty lists, you need many additional branches throu
by codeflo 6y ago
You want a zero-slice because it’s a simpler base case in almost any even mildly complex algorithm. Without empty lists, you need many additional branches throughout a code base to handle the “no element” case, causing more potential bugs. There’s nothing “8-bit” about cleaner code, quite the opposite.
- yodelshady 6y agoNo, you have no branches, because the "no element" case is *not a slice! It is a type error at generation! Instead, I'm dealing with that case at literally every one of thousands of places where I might receive it*! That's not clean.
- alentist 6y agoIt is. Just like 0 is a natural number, the empty string is a string, the empty set is a set, etc. If you've worked with mathematical proofs before, you'll have experience with how they make proofs shorter and more elegant. That's why they're natural base cases.