?: is a ternary operator introduced to write elegant if-else clause.
It is a concise way of writing simple conditionals. However, those should be easily understandable by any human. It should not be used to write deeply nested complex conditionals that hamper the readability.
When to use?
When you have very simple if-else that could be covered in one line and returns value.
Example:
Display text as “Weekend” if it’s a Sunday otherwise “Working day”
Another one:
Determine the restaurant to visit depending upon cash in your wallet.
When NOT to use?
As said earlier, they are used to simplify the conditional so that they add value and make code simple and elegant.
However, that does not mean you should blindly rewrite ALL if-else clause with the ternary operator. Please avoid them when expression becomes complex and difficult to understand.
const output = number % 3 === 0 && number % 5 === 0 ? "FizzBuzz"
: number % 3 === 0 ? "Fizz"
: number % 5 === 0 ? "Buzz"
: number;
In my career, I have seen people writing deeply nested clauses using the ternary operator. I kept the above example to convey my thoughts.
The above snippet adds unnecessary mental mapping to remember and process each conditional and symbols ?: ?: ?: more like a machine.
Please don’t be a human code compressor.
Better alternative
Conventional if-else over ternary when a condition becomes complex.
Day by day, high-level languages are introducing more features so that developers could write more human-readable expressive code. We should keep this point in our mind and avoid a few things like writing deeply nested complex ternary conditionals. Instead, go for conventional control flow statements like if-else or if-return-early.
Thoughts mentioned in this post are based on my personal experience. It is just a guideline. IMO, we should be compassionate about our co-worker while writing the code and should avoid clever-complex clauses using ternary operators and rather should focus on elegance.
Choosing a name has a huge impact on the readability of the code.
In this post, I will walk you through some of the bad and good examples which might convince you why naming matters.
Project directories:
Three projects, guess which one is admin site, native mobile app, and restful API?
Can you guess which project serves as an admin website, mobile app, and server-side API’s?
Here, The developer not only failed to give attention to naming but also masked his original intent of each project with some other words. Confusing?
The sentence:
P and Q went to R. They had a good dinner at S followed by T and then they came back to U.
Could you read the above sentence, understand its clear intent and reconstruct it after hours even though it’s a small sentence?
For me, it’s difficult to understand due to the usage of abbreviations. It will lead me to make different assumptions.
Code snippet:
Random code snippet
I am sure you have figured out what is this small code snippet doing. However, it was not that easy even though it was a small code snippet.
Now think about a project that contains more than 1000+ classes, modules, methods, files, and many more.
The complexity and frustration will be increased in the same magnitude if developers don’t give attention while naming those.
Don’t you think it will be painful for the maintenance developer as well as your future-self to visit and understand the intent behind the code?
Real-life analogy
Everything in this world has meaningful names. It helps our brain to understand, remember and figure out the things at ease. It means less mental mapping.
When you visit hypermarket, you could easily figure out groceries, fruits, cosmetics and so on.
You could easily fetch handwash, facewash, aftershave, sanitizer, liquid sanitizer, moisturizer, cold-drinks, cookies, water bottle and so on. Thanks to proper naming to the categories, items and so on.Naming matters!
Let’s revisit the above examples with careful naming.
Project directories:
Uglier way:
Three projects, guess which one is admin site, native mobile app, and restful API?
Better way:
See projects after renaming, are you able to figure out which one is admin site, mobile app, and API at ease?
The sentence:
Uglier way:
P and Q went to R. They had a good dinner at S followed by T and then they came back to U.
Better way:
Tom and Jerry went to a Mall. They had a good dinner at a restaurant followed by a movie and then they came back to their Home.
Do you realize the power of effective naming?
Code snippet:
Uglier way:
Random code snippet
Better way:
Find the Volume and Surface Area of Cuboids
Just looking at code snippet, it is crystal clear that code is working on height, length, and breadth to compute surface area and volume.
Now with proper naming to the variables, A small code snippet with careful variable naming makes developers life easy.
Imagine what will happen to readability, understandability, and maintainability if you show the same dedication while naming everything in the project.
We as a programmer try to solve the customer requirement or problem by creating various projects.
These projects may have directories, assemblies, namespaces, packages, files, classes, modules, properties, fields, events, method arguments, method parameters, UI elements, UI attributes, UI styles, validators, services, translation files, translation keys, command-line utilities and many more.
All of these things should have a meaningful name so that they convey their intent. You should be able to figure out what they are doing by just looking at their name.
Perhaps they should answer all the big questions that you or future maintenance developers would have.
Naming matters! Please give attention to naming everything in the programming!
What do you understand after reading the above number?
It is just raw data. The interpretation is left to the reader of the data.
However, the reader may not get the intent behind it.
It could be a zip code of a city.
It could be a birthday in DDMMYY format.
It could be a telephone number without the area code.
It could represent N number of things.
Do you agree with me that using just raw data does not convey its intent?
Similarly, a magic number in code is like raw data which does not convey its intent to the reader of the code.
A magic number is a numeric value that is used in the code. This value has unexplained meaning and hampers readability of the code.
Above code reads like John failed to upload his profile picture because the size of the profile picture was more than 10000000.
Here I did not understand the meaning of magic number 10000000.
Whether it is a size in Bits, Byte, KB, MB, GB?
Well, let’s introduce the named constant and see what happens.
Now, the code reads more like John failed to upload his profile picture because the size of the profile picture was more than maximum allowed file size i.e. 10000000 bytes.
As soon as you give metadata about the data i.e. relevant data it becomes information to the reader. The reader can work with it easily as the intent is clear.
Another example:
Bad way
When the given day is 0 or 6, Magic number! then put ‘-’ in cell content.
Better way
When the given day is Sunday or Saturday then put ‘-’ in cell content.
Thus, named constants could be used to provide data about raw data so that reader of your code could easily figure out the intent.
Conditionals play a vital role in code for performing business decisions. These conditionals should be easy to read.
If conditionals are complex then it might hamper readability. You would end up introducing more bugs if failed to understand its intent. Every time you visit this code, you will need to debug it to understand the intent.
Complex conditionals:
Complex conditional determines something to perform business rules
Look at above conditionals in if clause. It is clear that it is performing too many checks related to the package of the items. Please note that this package was ordered from an online e-commerce site and then performs important business decisions.
It will be difficult for the maintenance programmer to figure out each condition and know what question it tries to answer.
Let’s make the maintenance programmer’s life a little easy by writing readable code using encapsulate conditionals that have intuitive names and give the answer in yes/no format.
Better way:
Complex conditionals are extracted to a method. An intuitive name is given that tells what it is doing. The complex conditional block would be simplified like this. It reads like perform business decisions if a package is eligible for a return.
Another complex conditional
Too many questions here.
Preferred way:
A simplified version with clear intent: can view editor?
It is divided into small, cohesive, fine-grained methods which are doing one and only one thing.
When you favor a comment to express the intent of the code.
Before
...
// Parse input and convert it into Document
var xDocument = XDocument.Parse(input);
var document = new Document
{
Title = xDocument.Root.Element("title").Value,
Text = xDocument.Root.Element("text").Value
};
...
Here let’s get rid of comment [Parse input and convert it into Document].
After
...
var doc = ParseInput(input);
var serializedDoc = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(doc);
...
private Document ParseInput(string input)
{
var xDocument = XDocument.Parse(input);
var document = new Document
{
Title = xDocument.Root.Element("title").Value,
Text = xDocument.Root.Element("text").Value
};
return document;
}
When the extract method helps you to improve readability.
Do you know that people extract method for a single line too? Because it adds to the readability of the code. Sometimes a statement may be difficult to interpret. In that case, you could use the extract method to convey intent instead of taking the aid of comment.
When there is a code duplication or copy-paste.
Consider below example, it is formatting date and code is duplicated. Perhaps, lines are copied and pasted.
Before
var formattedStartDate = startDate.ToString("dd MMMM yyyy");
var formattedEndDate = endDate.ToString("dd MMMM yyyy");
As soon as you see copy and paste of lines of code then go for an extract method refactoring even if it is a small portion of code.
After
var formattedStartDate = FormatDate(startDate);
var formattedEndDate = FormatDate(endDate);
public string FormatDate(DateTime date)
{
return date.ToString("dd MMMM yyyy");
}
The advantage
Code becomes more readable.
Fine-grained methods make code easier to understand.
You can easily plug-in and plug out the implementation for some routines.
When your method becomes cohesive, you can easily spot the bugs in the code.
Your calling method reads more like a sentence.
Points to Ponder —
Remember, keep the method short, well-named, and cohesive to get more benefits out of it.
Your calling method should read more like sentences.
When extracting a method, a developer should think about the cohesiveness of the class. should ask a question to oneself: Does the extracted method really belong to this class? If Not, then move it to the appropriate class that should perform that operation.
Small methods really work only when you have good names.
Don’t just extract method if you can’t give the meaningful name.
Extract method only if you can give an intuitive name.