Discussion on: Do we even need if/else?

[Peter Vivo]

Depend on format, imho much better readable than if plus ternary give a result, do not need use let or var

const result = foo === 'x'
  ? doSomething() 
  : foo === 'z' 
    ? doSomethingElse() 
    : fallback()
  ;

[JoelBonetR 🥇]

I can't understand why y'all focus on readability in the first hand. Even Uncle Bob told us that the first half of a Dev's job is to make things work and the second half is to make it clean and readable.
You need to check first that your code covers the use cases and it's right (in the functional sense) and then you can re-write it on a more readable way (if any).

I'll set a funny working example on how to hash a string in JS using the Bitwise OR assignment in combination with the Left Shift Operator :

String.prototype.hash = function () {
  'use strict';
  var h = 0, i;
  if (this.length === 0) return h;
  for (i = 0; i < this.length; i++) {
    h = (h << 5) - h + this.charCodeAt(i);
    h |= 0;
  }
  return h;
}

now you can do myString.hash(). Enjoy.
If you're too afraid of ES releasing a hash() method you can use it as function as well

hash(str) { 
  'use strict';
  var h = 0, i;
  if (this.length === 0) return h;
  for (i = 0; i < this.length; i++) {
    h = (h << 5) - h + this.charCodeAt(i);
    h |= 0;
  }
  return h;
}

and call it like myString = hash(myString)

It works, i states for index and h states for hash.
You can change the variable names if you want to "index" and "hash" but can it be more readable than that? Let's let this question on air so you can answer with your ideas.

My guess is that unless you know how those operators work, you'll not fully understand it, on the other hand if you know'em, it will be obvious to you.

[Peter Vivo]

I think readability help take look our code even few month later.

Imho your hash algorythm looks like this:

const hash = str => [...str]
  .map(chr => chr.charCodeAt(0))
  .reduce((acu, code) => ((acu << 5) - acu + code) | 0, 0)
  ;

[JoelBonetR 🥇]

That's beautiful, and it can be provided as string method like:

String.prototype.hash = function () {
  return [...this]
  .map(chr => chr.charCodeAt(0))
  .reduce((acu, code) => ((acu << 5) - acu + code) | 0, 0)
}

This last one adds the requirement of understanding map and reduce and the one above the knowledge of basic if operator and for loop

That's just what we were talking about. Either the one in my post above or yours reduced example will be easy to understand if you know the operands but hard a.f. if you don't.

Readability is objective till some point where it turns subjective (by the knowledge and experience PoV) and that's the main reason of this cyclic discussions imo 😆

Someone whith basic or zero understanding on map would say yours is shit and someone with no knowledge of bitwise operators would complain of mine as well. The result in terms of readability can vary but none of those examples have a single thing wrong in readability terms, it has more or less lines of code (which is never equal to readability) and different operators or functions to reach the same. Which is more readable? Some will say 1 some will say 2. The important thing here is that both provide (unless I miss something) the exact same result for a same entry value.

[Peter Vivo]

That is the reason to know more about .map .filter .find and .reduce functionality in js. After basic one like if/else, for, while, switch. These functionality is lead to functional programming direction.

Any way

String.prototype.hash =

means you declare one global dependency on your code. I think much better to forget this type of work. Because this declaration influence your team whole application.

[JoelBonetR 🥇]

It will be available just when you import the file containing it, not less not more. It just depends on the project architecture. The only concern about setting string (or other data structure) methods like this is the possibility of ES adding a method with the same name and thus having to refactor it everywhere it's used (or deleting it if it's provided along the language)