Discussion on: Six Things You Thought Senior Devs Did (But We Don't)

[Chris Kent]

You can't really "avoid" else statements though, if they are not explicitly there then it is still an implicit else.

[Jason C. McDonald]

I think he means explicit else. I mostly agree it adds unnecessary complexity, although there are exceptions.

[Anton Frattaroli]

However it's worded, it works. This article gives a good example: axelerant.com/resources/team-blog/...

//Cyclomatic Complexity = 3. Npath Complexity = 4.
public int function (a, b) {
  If (a>b) {
    $return_value = a;
  } else {
    $return_value =b;
  }
  return $return_value;
}

// Above code can be rewritten as below.

//Cyclomatic Complexity = 2. Npath Complexity = 2.
public in function (a,b) {
  if(a >b) {
    return a;
  }
  return b;
}

[Jason C. McDonald]

Precisely.

The only time you might need an explicit else in my experience is when one or more conditions do not contain logic to leave the context (e.g. a return, break, or continue), and you have a block of code which should only be executed if none of the conditions were met.