Has / can anyone challenge Uncle Bob on his love of removing "useless braces"?

I hate referencing paywalled content, but this video shows exactly what I'm talking about. Precisely 12 minutes in Robert Martin looks at this: And says "One of my favorite things to do is getting rid of useless braces" as he turns it into this: A long time ago, in an education far far away, I was taught not to do this because it makes it easy to introduce a bug by adding another indented line thinking it's controlled by the if when it's not. To be fair to Uncle Bob, he's refactoring a long Java method down to tiny little functions that, I agree, are far more readable. When he's done changing it, (22.18) it looks like this: I'm wondering if that is supposed to validate removing the braces. I'm already familiar with the best practice. Can Uncle Bob be challenged on this point? Has Uncle Bob defended the idea?

Mar 7, 2025 - 00:31

Has / can anyone challenge Uncle Bob on his love of removing "useless braces"?

I hate referencing paywalled content, but this video shows exactly what I'm talking about. Precisely 12 minutes in Robert Martin looks at this:

And says "One of my favorite things to do is getting rid of useless braces" as he turns it into this:

A long time ago, in an education far far away, I was taught not to do this because it makes it easy to introduce a bug by adding another indented line thinking it's controlled by the if when it's not.

To be fair to Uncle Bob, he's refactoring a long Java method down to tiny little functions that, I agree, are far more readable. When he's done changing it, (22.18) it looks like this:

I'm wondering if that is supposed to validate removing the braces. I'm already familiar with the best practice. Can Uncle Bob be challenged on this point? Has Uncle Bob defended the idea?