Sometimes rigid code is simpler, sure. But what I am arguing is that it is almost never more debuggable / maintainable.

What I am saying is not specific to test and branch, though test and branch is great because it gives you these big code blocks into which you can insert more code and it's clear where that code lives and under what circumstances it runs. Which is something you don't get in assembly language, which is part of why the assembly language reply is a goofy straw-man argument.

Yes, my reply was a bit irritable; I would definitely prefer to have a reasonable discussion, but the assembly-language thing was the first volley in being unreasonable. Putting up a straw man like that is an attempt to win the argument, not an attempt to understand the other person's position. I detected this and decided, well, if that's the position, then it is useless trying to make further / deeper rational arguments, so I am just going to say, this comes from a lot of experience, so take it or leave it.

As fatbird replied, "This is shitty." (I can't reply to his reply yet because of the timed reply thing, so I am including it here.) Maybe it is shitty, I don't know, but it's true and sometimes you just have to say the true thing to be expedient and get on with life.

I don't have time to teach people on the internet how to program. I work my ass off for 4 years at a time to build and ship games that are critically acclaimed and played by millions of people. These are the kinds of things most programmers wish they had the opportunity to work on, and wish that they knew how to build. (Often programmers think they know how to build these things, and then they go try, and they fail. It is a lot harder than one thinks). I am not saying this to brag, because I honestly don't feel braggy about it right now. It's just fact. I am pretty good at programming (probably not as good as Carmack) and I have worked really hard for a long time to be as good as I am. Meanwhile I am also trying to be pretty good at game design, and oh yeah, running a software company.

So when I give advice like this, and someone retorts, and it seems to be coming from a place of lesser experience, it is not really worth my time to get into a serious argument. I am not going to learn anything. I have been in the place where I had that kind of opinion, many years ago, and then I learned more. Fine. I can either be polite and quiet about it, or say something a little bit blunt and rude, in the hope that the other person (and maybe any bystanders to the conversation) will seriously re-consider what was said in light of the new information that it comes from someone who is maybe not a joker. I can't spend a lot more time than that teaching everyone in the internet how to program, because it takes almost all the energy I can muster just to build software. (Though occasionally I do write up stuff about how to program, and give lectures bearing on that subject, like this one: http://the-witness.net/news/2011/06/how-to-program-independe...).

Of course this don't-get-into-the-argument strategy of mine has at least partially failed, since here I am typing out this really long reply. I don't know.