Booleans are natural code smells. Returning and casting them is sometimes a mistake

TL;DR: Don't return true or false. Be declarative.

Problems

• Readability

• Primitive Obsession

• If/Else abuse

Solutions

1. Return truth value in a declarative way

2. Replace IF With polymorphism.

Context

Dealing with low-level abstractions, we usually return booleans.

When we create complex and mature software, we start to forget about this primitive obsession and care about real-world rules and identities.

Sample Code

Wrong

boolean isEven(int num){
     if(num%2 == 0){
       return true;
    } else {
       return false;}        
}

Right

boolean isEven(int numberToCheck){
  //We decouple the what (to check for even or odd)
  //With how (the algorithm)
  return (numberToCheck % 2 == 0);     
}

Detection

[X] Automatic

Many linters can check syntactic trees and look for explicit true/value returns

Tags

• Primitive

Conclusion

Search on code libraries for return true statements and try to replace them when possible.

Relations

Code Smell 36 - Switch/case/elseif/else/if statements

Maxi Contieri ・ Nov 28 '20

#oop #webdev #tutorial #codenewbie

More Info

• How to get rid of IFs forever

Credits

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

The good news is: Anything is possible on your computer. The bad news is: Nothing is easy.

Ted Nelson

Software Engineering Great Quotes

Maxi Contieri ・ Dec 28 '20

#codenewbie #programming #quotes #software

This article is part of the CodeSmell Series.

How to Find the Stinky parts of your Code

Maxi Contieri ・ May 21 '21

#codenewbie #tutorial #codequality #beginners