• Kogasa@programming.dev
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    11 months ago

    People ITT hating on null coalescing operators need to touch grass. Null coalescing and null conditional (string?.Trim()) are immensely useful and quite readable. One only has to be remotely conscious of edge cases where they can impair readability, which is true of every syntax feature

  • 30p87@feddit.de
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    11 months ago

    Except there’s literally no change in performance as a normal compiler will treat those the same. It just looks nice and trim down the time an experienced dev reads and understands the code by around 200ms.

  • Knusper@feddit.de
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    11 months ago

    I enjoy this:

    return a.or(b);
    

    But yeah, that requires an Option type rather than null pointers…

  • PoastRotato@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    My coworker flips his shit every time I include a ternary operator in a PR. He also insists on refactoring any block of code longer than two lines into its own function, even when it’s only used once.

    He is not well liked.

  • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    Python, checking in …

    return (a or b)
    

    Parentheses aren’t necessary, I just prefer them for readability.

    See python documentation on boolean operators for reference. Short story is a or b is an expression that evaluates to a if a is “truthy” else b. “Falsy” is empty strings/containers, 0 and None.

  • ugo@feddit.it
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    11 months ago

    If this was cpp, clang-tidy would tell you “do not use else after return”

    I don’t know how null works in swift, but assuming it coerces to bool I’d write

    if (a) return a;
    return b;
    
  • zero_gravitas@aussie.zone
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    11 months ago

    Ruby:

    a || b

    (no return as last line is returned implicitly, no semicolon)

    EDIT: As pointed out in the comments, this is not strictly equivalent, as it will return b if a is false as well as if it’s nil (these are the only two falsy values in Ruby).

    • stebo02@sopuli.xyz
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      11 months ago

      Python:

      return a or b

      i like it because it reads like a sentence so it somewhat makes sense

      and you can make it more comprehensive if you want to:

      return a if a is not None else b

      • Turun@feddit.de
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        11 months ago

        This diverges from the OP code snippets if a has the value False.

      • rwhitisissle@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        For newer python people, they see return a or b and typically think it returns a boolean if either is True. Nope. Returns a if a is truthy and then checks if b is truthy. If neither are truthy, it returns b.

        • Arthur Besse@lemmy.ml
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          11 months ago

          Returns a if a is truthy and then checks if b is truthy. If neither are truthy, it returns b.

          Not quite. If a is not truthy, then the expression a or b will always return b.

          So, there is never any reason to check the truthiness of b.

          you can paste this in your repl to confirm it does not.
          class C:
           def __repr__(self): return [k for k, v in globals().items() if v is self][0]
           def __bool__(self):
            print(f"{self}.__bool__() was called")
            return False
          
          a, b = C(), C()
          print(f"result: {a or b}")
          
          output
          a.__bool__() was called
          result: b
          
  • DudeDudenson@lemmings.world
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    11 months ago

    And no one on his team ever understood his code.

    Sometimes being declarative is better than being “smart”

    • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 months ago

      I’m confused on how this is difficult to understand. Put aside the fact that it’s just a regular operator that… I mean virtually everyone should know, how hard is it to google “what does ?? mean in [language]” which has the added benefit of learning a new operator that can clean up your code?

      • DudeDudenson@lemmings.world
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        11 months ago

        If condition then this else that vs this ?? that

        Which option do you think requires less time for a person to identify and understand?

        Sure if it’s just your own code do whatever comes natural to you but there’s a reason we don’t use these kind of logical operators in day to day speech is my point.

        Ive been a backend dev for 2 years now and I’ve never come across the ?? operator and every time I come across a ternary operator I have to Google in what order comes what.

        Not saying it doesn’t make the code more concise and less “noisy” but sometimes a simple if else statement just makes the code easier to mantain

      • DonnerWolfBach@feddit.de
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        11 months ago

        Well yeah but imagine you had to do that on most lines of the code? It would become very distracting imho. If you are in a team with people that have a lot experience and or will learn more anyway this is fine. But if you are in a team with not very good programmers which “will never learn” because they have other stuff to do, you should be careful when using code like this. Though I would prefer in the former of course.

        • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          11 months ago

          Honestly, and I mean this sincerely, if you’re on a team where the nullable coalesce is going to be confusing after the first handful of times encountered… look for a new job. It doesn’t bode well for their ability to do their jobs.

          This is like the guy at Walmart who needs hand holding each time they clean a machine, it’s a problem waiting to happen.