The Anti-IF Campaign

About the Anti-IF Campaign

What is the Anti-IF Campaign?

The Anti-IF Campaign is a movement of software developers aware of the risks of applying the "IF Strategy" to deal with growth, change and complexity and looking for ways of replacing it with other design techniques able to reduce the complexity of their software system.

Is this Campaign against the use of the IF statement?

NO!

The IF statement can be extremely useful from a design point view (e.g. Guard Clauses).

The Campaign is against the use of the IF statement as a regular design strategy to deal with growth, change and complexity ("Let's Put an IF Syndrome") in an evolutionary context. Despite being an "easy," and apparently effective, way of delivering the value requested by the customer, this "design strategy" has negative repercussions when applied regularly as the main strategy to deal with change, growth and complexity. By applying the "IF Strategy" in an evolutionary context, software systems becomes more complex to be read, tested, even debugged. It becomes easier to duplicate code, accumulate technical debt and spend more time fixing bugs. In the result, the software system become more complex. New features and changes will cost more and more.

How does it work?

The Campaign accomplishes its goals by:

• Supporting free initiatives and holding free events
• Gathering supporters
• Sharing experiences on how to improve design effectiveness

The idea

The Anti-IF Campaign started in 2007 from Francesco Cirillo's idea: "Lots of teams want to be agile but they don't know how to deal with change and reduce the complexity of their software systems. The 'IF Strategy' can compromise the flexibility of a software system and its ability to evolve. Let's begin with something concrete. Let's replace the 'IF Strategy' and its dangerous IFs with more effective design techniques."

Who is it for?

The inappropriate use of IFs is a clear source of increased complexity of a software system. And this has consequences not only for developers' work. All the team can benefit a greater effectiveness by adopting Anti-IF solutions: Software Developers, Product Developers, Business Analysts, Project Leaders, Software Quality Assurance team members.

Here's a little story...

...about a software developer working in a company who was building up a nice platform. One day the boss calls the developer on the phone and says: "There’s a new task I need you to do for a really important client, and it must be done by the end of the day. All that’s needed," the boss continues "is to add a small piece of functionality to that class method you’ve been working on... it shouldn’t be too complex..."

The days go by...

and that small class, edit by edit, grows into a small code monster: the more you feed it with IFs, the bigger it grows!

Do you think it’s just a fairy tale?

Well, it’s not!

What follows below is a single class method taken from real code that is live on a server somewhere on the Internet right now. And this is just a "baby monster". The more you feed it, the bigger it grows!

	calculateWageFor(Person aPerson) {
		...
IF=>	IF(aPerson.type == Person.EMPLOYEE) {
			ordinaryHourlyWage = 15;
			overtimeHourlyWage = 20;
IF=>		IF(aPerson.status == Person.PARENTALLEAVE) {
				ordinaryHourlyWage= ordinaryHourlyWage * .70; // 70%
IF=>			IF(aPerson.daysOffLeft() > 10) {
					ordinaryHourlyWage = ordinaryHourlyWage * 0.9; // 90%
				}
			}
			salary = aPerson.ordinaryWorkHours * 
					 ordinaryHourlyWage +	
					 aPerson.overtimeWorkHours * 
					 overtimeHourlyWage;
		}
IF=>	IF(person.type == Person.MANAGER) {
			fixedWage = 3000;
			monthlyBonus = lastYearsProfit  * .10 / 12; // 10% monthly
IF=>		IF(aPerson.status == Person.PARENTALLEAVE) {
				monthlyBonus= monthlyBonus * .60; // 70%
IF=>			IF(aPerson.daysOffLeft() > 10) {
					fixedWage = fixedWage * 1; // 90%
                    monthlyBonus= monthlyBonus * 1; // 70%
				}
			}
			salary =  fixedWage + monthlyBonus; 
		}
IF=>	IF(person.type == Person.CONSULTANT) {
			dailyFee = 300;
			workHours = aPerson.workHours();
			realDays = workHours / 7;
			salary = realDays * dailyFee;
		} 
		return salary;
	 }

Pretty scary,huh?

Yes, it is.
And it happens everyday all over the web.
So, what can I do to help?

Join the Campaign

If you or your team want to join the Campaign, then all you need to do is to publish one of the two banners below on your site. The site can be a personal blog, a company site or a user group’s website.

Add Your Name to the List of Supporters

Send us an email (support@francescocirillo.com) indicating the site where you've published the banner to let us know that you've become a Campaign Supporter, and your name will appear on the List of Supporters.

Thanks to all of our Supporters!

Get the banner

Code for the banner "I've joined!"

<a href="http://www.antiifcampaign.com">
  <img height="60" width="120"
  src="https://i.ibb.co/M9qBPnR/banner-ive-joined.gif"
  alt="I have joined Anti-IF Campaign"></a>

Code for the banner "My team has joined!"

<a href="http://www.antiifcampaign.com">
  <img height="60" width="120"
  src="https://i.ibb.co/bPzdHZj/banner-my-team-has-joined.gif"
  alt="My team has joined Anti-IF Campaign"></a>

Who's joined

Useful Resources

FAQ

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