3 ms·

How is "If" as a function even a drawback? It is largely seen as something desired, no? I would see that as a huge advantage, which allows for very powerful pro

• gucci-on-fleek 10mo ago
  One potential issue is that unlike most other languages, it doesn't create a new scope. But almost nothing in Mathematica introduces a new scope, and Python also uses unscoped "if"s, so it's rarely much of a problem in practice. But with pattern matching, you almost never need to use "If[]" anyways: fib[0] := 0 fib[1] := 1 fib[n_ /; n < 2] := Undefined fib[n_Integer] := fib[n - 1] + fib[n - 2] fib[8] (* Output: 21 *) fib /@ Range[10] (* Output: {1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55} *) fib[-1] (* Output: Undefined *) fib["a string"] (* Output: fib["a string"] *)