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Comment by DogLover_ | Hacker News Reader

Early returns is the best pattern I ever adapted. Because of it I rarely if ever use 'else' expressions anymore which leads to less convoluted code.

It seems we have different experiences because where I see early returns used is mostly where functions are already small.

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Or is it that you (guys) can't have bigger functions because you impulsively fill them with early returns? So you end up over-engineering things just to avoid bigger functions (because you can't have them because they are filled with early returns). Real question, I don't have the answer, but that question is my take from this discussion.

If you don't use early returns don't you end up with functions doing lots of state/variable mutation (within the function)? Thats what I consider the problem with big function and/or not using early returns. You then need to keep track of all those modification. I find it much easier to reason with early returns.

You can certainly over-engineer things just to avoid bigger functions. However from my experience I see that far less than complicated large functions with little care to readability.

don't you end up with functions doing lots of state/variable mutation (within the function)?

Good question. This is true, but this is a programming language bug. In some programming language you can write the equivalent of return if... or return for.... Also note that those intermediate variables add a lot in expressiveness (you're computing result or screensize etc). The mutation is unfortunate indeed but a programming language bug.

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