If-less programming (basically without conditionals) [closed]

Solution 1:

There are some resources on the Anti-IF Campaign site, such as this article.

I believe it's a matter of degree. Conditionals aren't always bad, but they can be (and frequently are) abused.

Additional thoughts (one day later)

Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code is a good reference on this subject (and many others). It covers Replace Conditional with Polymorphism. There's also a new one, Replace Conditional with Visitor, on the web site.

I value simplicity and single responsibility over removing all if statements. These three goals often coincide. Static analysis tools that support the cyclomatic complexity metric can quickly point out code with nested or serial conditionals. The if statements may remain post-refactoring, but could be broken out into smaller methods and/or multiple classes.

Update: Michael Feathers wrote an article on Unconditional Programming.

This is a popular topic: Phil Haack on Death to the IF statement!

Solution 2:

After some years of programming I return to my own question, the context of which I now understand a little better.

There's a good talk by Sandi Metz where she refactors a really hairy ball of if-statements to something waaay less hairy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bZh5LMaSmE