I wasn't even aware we had a programmers day, so I've spent my programmers day cleaning up after someone who's getting no jelly and ice cream at this programmers party.
Ok, pardon my ignorance, and I know this is really getting out into the pedantry weeds, but that seems like a slightly bizarre post, at best misleading, at worst even wrong.
Why would anyone chose A in that example? Does using pre- and post- increment really result in different behavior for that example in C#? In other words, do these really produce different output:
for(int i = 0; i < 5; ++i) {
Console.WriteLine(i);
}
for(int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
Console.WriteLine(i);
}
It seems like the example might have been supposed to be:
for(int i = 0; i < 5; ) {
Console.WriteLine(i++);
}
Furthermore, is this even correct: "What is the order of operation? Declare, loop body, compare, increment, loop body, compare, increment, .... " Surely for loops in C# are the same in almost every other language, and the comparison happens once before the body is ever executed?
I don't know anything about C#, but I think the suggestion to use one over the other due to performance is pretty poor advice if applied in general. I doubt incrementing an integer is a performance issue in many programs, and if it is you should come to that conclusion after careful profiling. Granted, that post makes the point that based on the C# spec one may be faster than the other, but I still think there are more important things to spend time optimizing.
I like how an off the cuff response to a jokey piece of pseudocode gets decent responses. And people say Hacker News has gone downhill.
I like pre-increment due to the speed aspects as well, but it took ages to break out from the university training of "use post-increment for most situations", which is frankly baffling.
The compiler I am using produces the exact same output for either variation of the aforementioned code. Perhaps it is a good habit to get into if you are jumping between different tools though.
