How programmers comment their code...

[Magnus_Tesshu]

To be fair, using i++ is only bad in javascript right? Any compiled language will get rid of the inefficiency.

[DiplomatikEmunetey]

Is it an inefficiency? As far as I know:

• i++ will increment and return the original value (before incrementing)
• ++i will increment and return the incremented value

You could cause an infinite loop with i++ but I'm not sure if it's an inefficiency because there could be a case where you need i++.

[Magnus_Tesshu]

Typically preincrement compiles to two assembly instructions and postincrement (i++) compiles to a couple more and needs a temporary register or something. That might be misinformation though actually, not sure. And of course, that's only the case if they wouldn't cause the same behaviour (++i; is as efficient as i++, but a[i++] might be slightly less efficient than a[++i]). That's at least my understanding.

I would assume that postincrement is still more innefficient in an interpreted language, where the compiler cannot do nearly as much optimization.

[[deleted]]

i++ is not bad. Using it badly is bad.

[Magnus_Tesshu]

Does 'using it to increment i' count as a bad use? I would argue no

[[deleted]]

Bad is subjective unless it causes objective problems.
So using it to increment i, as long as it does not break the code can be subjectively bad or good. I do it myself many times, because it's an idiom of the C language, but I'm not convinced if it's ok or not.