Best Practice on IF/ELSE Statement Order

Question

Which is a better practice? (I\'m coding in .Net if that makes a difference)

IF condition = true THEN
   ...true action--even if rare...
ELSE
   ...action
E         


        

Answer 1

Use whichever makes the code easier to read. This is usually the second of your options.

Edit

In a lot of cases, it depends on what you're trying to achieve, for example, if you want to check that a connection started correctly:

Connect()
if connected then
    SendString("Hello!")
else
    FlagConnectionFailed()
endif

Whereas if you want to catch an error:

' Just about to send something
if not connected then
    FlagConnectionLost()
    return
endif
SendString("Still connected!")

But you may even want to:

Disconnect()
if not connected then
    return "Complete"
else
    FlagConnectionDisconnectFailure()
endif

(I'm not a VB programmer, so the syntax above is largely made up!)