How to replace for-loops with a functional statement in C#?

Question

A colleague once said that God is killing a kitten every time I write a for-loop.

When asked how to avoid for-loops, his answer was to use a functional language. However

Answer 1

Your colleague may be suggesting under certain circumstances where database data is involved that it is better to use an aggregate SQL function such as Average() or Sum() at query time as opposed to processing the data on the C# side within an ADO .NET application.

Otherwise for loops are highly effective when used properly, but realize that if you find yourself nesting them to three or more orders, you might need a better algorithm, such as one that involves recursion, subroutines or both. For example, a bubble sort has a O(n^2) runtime on its worst-case (reverse order) scenario, but a recursive sort algorithm is only O(n log n), which is much better.

Hopefully this helps.

• Jim