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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

Why not both?

I can't give you a hard reason. I guess when I learned C all examples were like c=yesno?1:2. So I guess I stuck to it and never thought about triggering an action with side effects that way.

I see.

So as an example of doing both, consider following Java pseudocode (simples example that comes to my mind now):

  Foo value = someCondition()
              ? map1.computeIfAbsent("key", defaultValueProvider)
              : map2.computeIfAbsent("key", defaultValueProvider);

This both gets a value and changes state of the map; which map is queried/altered is determined by the condition. I personally don't mind such code, and prefer it to if/else version.

Shouldn't that be:

  Foo value = ( someCondition() ? map1 : map2 ).computeIfAbsent("key", defaultValueProvider);

Or some kind of moral equivalent?

Could be, though this is an artifact of a simplified example that I didn't mean to be relevant here.

For clarity, let's rewrite it as:

  Foo value = someCondition()
              ? map1.computeIfAbsent("key", defaultValueProvider)
              : list1.get(42);

Honest answer. :) Rephrased: There is no reason. It's just tradition for you.

I have been doing this for a while and I am trying to keep things simple and consistent now. I used to do "elegant" code that used a ton of language features but now my PHP or C# look almost the same.

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