Continue, or else — Andriy Gordiyenko

Controlling flow with if else seems like an intuitive default when checking for multiple conditions.

However, I noticed that I’ve been using continue inside loops more often lately.

Here’s a comparison:

while r < arr.count {
    
    if l == r {
        // ...
    } 
    
    else if tempSum >= sum {
        // ...
    } 
    
    else {
        // ...
    }
}

while r < arr.count {
    
    if l == r {
        // ...
        continue
    }
    
    if tempSum >= sum {
        // ...
        continue
    }
    
    // ...
}

I think I prefer continue over if else for two reasons:

When I read through the code continue clearly signals to me that if the condition is satisfied, there’s no need to continue reading the body of the loop. With if else there’s a chance that the if else block is followed by more code and it will be executed regardless of the condition.
Writing code this way also feels a bit more natural. Sometimes when going through the loop, you want to get rid of the easiest or edge cases first before you proceed to the ones that require a more meatier logic. You write the case, you slap continue, you clear your mind from the case you just wrote, and proceed to the next case or logic.

This is most definitely a personal stylistic preference and I’m not 100% sure if I’m using continue for the reasons above. Maybe my subconsciousness thinks of arcarde every time it processes the word “continue”, enjoys the memories and asks for more satisfaction — all while I’m struggling to find a sequence within an array that satisfies a certain criteria.