I work with python so here’s python
return a or b
a.unwrap_or(b)
I tried picking up rust for the AoC, but any program I wrote ended up unreadable cuz of this unwrap_or. It just allows too much chaining. Then again other options for chaining operations aren’t much better, like match. Idk what I’m doing wrong or if rust never was meant to be readable.
Yea uh is this actually equivalent? In all of those other cases you’re checking if a is null and in the last case my understanding is it is checking to see if a is falsely. In the case that a is 0, or undefined, or an empty array or any other kind of non null falsey value, then the behavior would be different.
Even in Javascript, the ?? operator checks explicitly for null or undefined. So it added undefined, but not 0 or false. But adding undefined sounds like a good addition for this operator.
See the Javascript section of: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_coalescing_operator#Examples_by_languages
In C# that last one is the null propagation operator. If a is not null then a, else b.
Ah interesting one of those cases where this could be one of a few languages. I was reading it as JS.
I thought it was TS/JS too, but the way those braces are below the if statements makes it feel more like C#.
And no one on his team ever understood his code.
Sometimes being declarative is better than being “smart”
I’m confused on how this is difficult to understand. Put aside the fact that it’s just a regular operator that… I mean virtually everyone should know, how hard is it to google “what does ?? mean in [language]” which has the added benefit of learning a new operator that can clean up your code?
Well yeah but imagine you had to do that on most lines of the code? It would become very distracting imho. If you are in a team with people that have a lot experience and or will learn more anyway this is fine. But if you are in a team with not very good programmers which “will never learn” because they have other stuff to do, you should be careful when using code like this. Though I would prefer in the former of course.
Honestly, and I mean this sincerely, if you’re on a team where the nullable coalesce is going to be confusing after the first handful of times encountered… look for a new job. It doesn’t bode well for their ability to do their jobs.
This is like the guy at Walmart who needs hand holding each time they clean a machine, it’s a problem waiting to happen.
If condition then this else that vs this ?? that
Which option do you think requires less time for a person to identify and understand?
Sure if it’s just your own code do whatever comes natural to you but there’s a reason we don’t use these kind of logical operators in day to day speech is my point.
Ive been a backend dev for 2 years now and I’ve never come across the ?? operator and every time I come across a ternary operator I have to Google in what order comes what.
Not saying it doesn’t make the code more concise and less “noisy” but sometimes a simple if else statement just makes the code easier to mantain
This is why I usually don’t comment on stuff like this in PRs. If it’s readable and easy to understand it doesn’t need more abstractions. Even if it’s less code. What’s it save like a few bytes? That’s not as useful as the whole team instantly knowing how the code works when they see it lol
I will say though if a jr dev came upon the last code they would just look it up and learn something so that’s a total valid path too. Just depends on your codebase and how your team works. I think it usually ends up being a mix with larger teams.
There’s more to it imho. The first three are more prone to mistakes than the last. You are much less likely to accidentally alter the logic intended in a simple null coalesce than you are in if statements.
That’s fair but if you had proper test coverage there wouldn’t be much risk. Who has that though? Lol
The last panel is infinitely more readable than parsing the whole chunk of logic above. Maybe you’re just not used to this language’s (I think this meme used C#) null operators.
Yeah, I have very little programming experience, and even not knowing the code, I figured this one out. Super simplified and clear.
What if both are null
Normally the purpose of a block of code like this is to provide a fallback hardcoded value if the dynamic value from your API or whatever is null. Like, setting a default title for a page of a notes app if the user didnt set a title themselves etc.
So, b is very likely to be a never-null, hardcoded value.
This code can still be valid and return null if b is null too, as the other person said.
