Epic Answer - Avoiding If statements

Epic Answer - Avoiding If statements(stackoverflow.com)

9 points by sidmkp96 13 years ago | 4 comments

yen223 13 years ago |

It's easy - use switch/case statements!

But seriously, isn't it true that Smalltalk doesn't have if statements?

fzzzy 13 years ago | |

Yes. Smalltalk has the ifTrue: and ifFalse: methods on the Boolean object.

  x > y ifTrue: [ Transcript show: 'Truthy' ]

So it is using polymorphism as the main mechanism. The True object implements ifTrue: by evaluating the block argument and implements ifFalse: by doing nothing. The False object does the opposite.

andymoe 13 years ago |

His idea in the second edit is similar to what is done with a lot of methods in Cocoa and Cocoa Touch and so on: http://cocoadev.com/wiki/MethodSwizzling

amccloud 13 years ago |

Wouldn't that be considered a state machine? I've done something with an audio player. Each state was a different class.