Elecorn: The Animated Coder

Here is a coding convention that I have recently adopted and wish I would have adopted earlier. I would recommend it to all without exception. It is:

Use enumerations instead of boolean values as parameters to functions when there is more than one parameter.

For example these are okay:

Show(bool value);
Setup(ShowState showState, Orientation orientation, CollisionState collisionState);

These are not okay:

Setup(bool showOnStart, bool orientLeft, bool enableCollision);
Serialize(string filename, bool save);

Consider reading:

Setup(true, false, true);
Serialize(“myfile.bin”, true);

Vs. something like this:

Setup(ShowState::Show, Orientation::Right, CollisionState::Enabled)
Serialize(“myfile.bin”, SerializeOperation::Save);

Another advantage is that this opens things up later if you decide to add in more than one state for a variable.

For example, let’s say we wanted to add “Forward” and “Backward” to Orientation, or a “LoadAndWriteBack” to Serialize.

So there you go. A little gem to make your code better and your life easier.