[saltcured]

What do these languages do when you accidentally miss a branch in you decision tree? Is there any lexical or static analysis error, or does it cause a runtime error or implicit null return when you hit the actual missed condition? I think these differences in potential outcomes are what guide many of these cultural rules of thumb in different programming styles.

In imperative programming, a bunch of nested conditionals can easily have incomplete coverage of possible program states, and it can be easy to overlook problems if you have a mixture of side-effect branches and early returns. I think some people struggle with this more than others, and it can flummox them almost like goto-laden spaghetti code.

Of course, there are other areas where similar errors can occur in different languages, i.e. in exception-handling or pattern-matching constructs. There are many different coding styles which can make these control-flow structures easier or harder to debug. But, I think there can also be a lot of "cargo culting" where zombie rules of thumb continue beyond when they were really particularly helpful.

[BlargMcLarg]

And this is likely one of those zombie rules. It's a trivial case and anyone with a semblance of programming knowledge understands what happens. You don't even need the else statement in GP's case. Meanwhile, any non-trivial case is so context-dependent you can't blindly apply rules and claim to have the best result or even just a better result from what people would come up with naturally.

The fact everything is context-dependent is the basis of all these discussions to begin with. We severely lack evidence and most rules are hearsay taken as gospel.