6 ms·

> in short circuit conditionals even more so. I'm curious, what leads you to believe that skipping unnecessary calls to functions with side effects is somethin

• DubiousPusher 4y ago
  I believe that running the same code path as much as possible per software cycle is to be desired. The code I'd call in the case that client code didn't specify a function wouldn't produce any side effects. It would be an empty function object/pointer. I would almost always rather support default behavior through dummy data rather than null checks. I find that a lot of software bugs come from the unintended consequences of branching. Especially branches which create state that is consumed later. In fact, I find that most null checks lead to bad software behavior as it often hides bugs. Early outting when null is detected is especially silly to me. The client has just tried to run a procedure which had to be abandoned due to a lack of data and you're just going to quit silently? If you're using dummy data for default scenarios and asserting not null rather than checking, you will eliminate most logical null checks in your code. Though I do concede that in the case where you must support null checks, such a short circuit as above is acceptable and in fact preferable to me over two if statements.