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Real quick question about the "break" (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 11 months ago by UnRelatedBurner@sh.itjust.works to c/programming@programming.dev

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I'm studying programming, and I don't agree woth my teacher. She basically said that if we use break (and continue too maybe) our test is an instant fail. She's reasoning is that it makes the code harder to read, and breaks the flow of it or something. (I didn't get her yapping tbh)

I can't understand why break would do anything of the sorts. I asked around and noone agreed with the teacher. So I came here. Is there a benefit to not using breaks or continues? And if you think she's wrong, please explain why, briefly even. We do enough down talking on almost all teachers she doesn't need more online.

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[–] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Okay, I want to clarify two different but highly similar syntaxes: break; and break 3;. The latter syntax of break #number is fucking awful and you should never use it. In most languages it'll only count loops and not conditionals so it can be extremely hard to tell how many levels of indentation you're unrolling and it's probably a code smell about having an overly complex function anyway.

However, good old single level break and continue are awesome and useful for making it really clear what preconditions exist in complex situations when looping. It's much easier to read a series of elementary if break statements than one single gigantic if statement with half a dozen conditions.

Most tools in our toolbox are useful... oh, except goto (unless you're programming in assembly language). Fuck goto.

[–] UnRelatedBurner@sh.itjust.works -1 points 11 months ago

haha I personally like both gotos and multi layered breaks, I know it's bad practice, and I avoid them, but it's fun.

That aside, you summed up what we are thinking pretty accurately.