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Despite using The Framework at work, we still have conflicting coding styles within the office. I fall squarely into the “braces are bad” camp. If an if statement doesn’t require braces to work, then it shouldn’t have them. For example

if(something)
    do_this();
else
    do_that();

To me, that’s good lookin’ code. Why add clutter where it’s not needed? The argument I hear most often against this comes from Scott - “because it saves time if you have to go back and add another line.” Fine. Maybe it will save you a little typing later. And maybe it will even catch an error or two down the road.

That logic has never sat right with me, yet I could never articulate why exactly. Today I found an old blog post by Wil Shipley that says what I’ve felt in my heart all along. Wil writes

I don’t like extra braces around one-line if statements. I know, that way you can add extra lines any time you want and you don’t have to think blah blah blah. But we’re trying to make our code more READABLE. That’s the key. You can spend 10 seconds adding braces if you end up writing another line. It’s like you’re slicing bread before every meal just in case you decide to make a sandwich, and then 90% of the time you just throw the bread away.

Bam! Take that all you brace enablers! That’s sandwich logic.