Comments on: Software Developers who need to be kicked in the balls

By: Kris Johnson

Kris Johnson — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:25:02 +0000

To clarify, when I say “I see it”, I mean a plain-old do…while (without preceding if), used in the appropriate way (do something at least once).

BTW, I completely agree about the folks who do “if (someBoolean == true) …”. AAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!

By: Kris Johnson

Kris Johnson — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 01:24:30 +0000

I’d agree that putting a conditional before “do .. while” is pretty inane. But, like another commenter, I see it fairly often in the kind of code I peruse, much of which is very low-level device-driver kinds of stuff.

By: Paul Tomblin

Paul Tomblin — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:07:12 +0000

I’m not 100% down on do/while, although like I say they’re relatively rare in the sort of code I do. Yesterday, I was redoing somebody else’s code and I replaced at least 10 and possibly 15 “do/while” loops that had either a conditional at the front or a repeated chunk of code with much clearer “while” loops. Several of them turned into “for (FooClass fc : fooClassCollection) { … }” loops, and the others were mostly “while (resultSet.hasNext()) { … }” loops.

By: bk

bk — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:51:44 +0000

I could be wrong here, but I thought evaluating the conditional before executing the ‘while’ is the way to do it.

Paul, you’re not explicitly condemning do/while, are you?

In Perl I’ll use
while (conditon) {
*do something*
}

but putting the *do something* first seems arse ways about for multiple reasons.

JAFPH

By: jonesie

jonesie — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:13:23 +0000

I come to you as a lay person with less than no understanding of what you’re talking about. And yet…

Can I give Bill Gates a kick for Word?

Yes, yes. Easy target. Yes, yes world philanthropy.

Blah blah blah.

Fucking facist defaults. Word is a writing program developed without any understanding of writers.

By: Gordon

Gordon — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 04:48:55 +0000

I can’t see anything wrong with the “do { … } while(cond)” construct, either. There are valid uses of it, such as when you need to execute the chunk of code at least once. If you’re using another means of getting achieving the same behaviour you’re probably making it too complicated.

Of course, I suppose you could get the same effect by sticking a label at the top of the chunk of code and an if with a goto at the bottom. (But those people *should* be given a swift kick.)

By: David Parsons

David Parsons — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 03:16:53 +0000

“do { … } while(cond); is something I’ve almost never seen in 20+ years of C, C++, and Java.”

Um, I’m just sitting here with my jaw dropping open. Application programming must be a wonderful and exotic land, because I see do/while all over the place in systems code. (And in places where I can’t see it being replaced except by either duplicating big chunks of code or putting a goto.)

By: Paul Tomblin

Paul Tomblin — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 02:05:24 +0000

do { … } while(cond); is something I’ve almost never seen in 20+ years of C, C++, and Java. The very rarity of it means that it is a surprise when you see it - which means that you should only use it where you really need to run the loop once before testing the conditional. Putting the same damn condition before it, as in “if (cond) { do { … } while(cond);}”, which I’ve encountered about 10 times in the last two days while re-writing some code from a former co-worker, is just fucking stupid. What this guy has done is taken a very common and instantly recognizable and understandable paradigm, the “while” loop, and turned it into something nowhere near as comprehensible.

By: Kris Johnson

Kris Johnson — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:23:20 +0000

I’m prepared to be mocked here, but I want to know: What is it about “do {…} while (cond);” that makes the user kick-worthy?

By: Seth

Seth — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:46:51 +0000

And women who do that kind of stuff deserve a kick in the balls, too, so what’s the issue?