I agree with the other commenters, but I'll say that I understand the original intent of the rule was to avoid confusing logic, such as: if (x): do(thing1)

I agree with the other commenters, but I'll say that I understand the original intent of the rule was to avoid confusing logic, such as: if (x): do(thing1) y := do(thing2) if (y): do(thing3) return 0 else: return -1 else: do(thing4) return 0 ___ As you can see, such logic could quickly become hard to test and reason about. Does a single return help all that much? Not in and of itself, but it does tend to make writing such code a bit more painful, leading to better designs. However, guard clauses are a superior design in general. I still avoid multiple returns in my main logic when side effects are involved, at least when I can.