[brundolf]

The problem is definitely much worse when returns are scattered throughout the function instead of grouped at the top, but I still prefer them to be "elsed" together (or in a switch/cond/match statement or whatever). Worth noting that in Lisp - one of the classical languages where early-returning is popular - there isn't a problem because it is done as I describe:

  (cond
    (early-return-condition early-value)
    (second-early-condition early-value2)
    ...
    (t final-else-value))

The "default case" is on the same footing as the other cases. Only in procedural languages does the control-flow get confusing if you aren't careful.

[t-writescode]

If you want elses everywhere, how do you protect yourself from nesting hell? I find nesting hell to be far, far, faaaar worse for readability than any of the alternatives, and will move to the early return model to escape all that nesting.

[brundolf]

I dunno, I just rarely ever find myself nesting more than two or three levels of conditionals even in extreme cases. If my logic really is that complicated, it's probably a sign it needs to be broken up anyway. And if I did need that much branching, I would want to be more explicit about it, not less.

Also - at the very least - you can mimick the "flat" early-return style and just stick some else's in there and call it a day. That's my main point; less so the actual deeper nesting