Flow scoping

[Brian Goetz]

> Still, I believe that if you really care about making the structure of 
> the code clear, then you would be well advised to (a) avoid inverting 
> the sense of boolean tests, and (b) avoid relying on the fact that one 
> arm of a conditional has a control transfer so  that you can “get away 
> with” saving a level of horizontal indentation.

I think the clarity knife sometimes cuts in this direction, but 
sometimes in the other direction.

If I have:

     if (x instanceof P(var y)) {
         // more than a page of code
     }
     else
         throw new FooException();

vs

     if (!(x instanceof P(var y)))
         throw new FooException();

     // the same page of code

In the latter case, i've checked all my preconditions up front, so it's 
more obviously fail-fast.  Maintainers are less likely to forget the 
condition they just tested a page ago, and readers are more able to 
build a mental model of the invariants of the happy path for this 
method.  So I think it's not always about "saving indentation"; in this 
case it's "get the precondition checks out of the way, and set me up to 
do the work without further interruption."