I am working in a .Net, C# shop and I have a coworker that keeps insisting that we should use giant Switch statements in our code with lots of Cases rather than more object oriented approaches.  His argument consistently goes back to the fact that a Switch statement compiles to a cpu jump table and is therefore the fastest option (even though in other things our team is told that we don't care about speed).I honestly don't have an argument against this...because I don't know what the heck he's talking about.Is he right?Is he just talking out his ass?Just trying to learn here.
Why use an OO approach instead of a giant switch statement?
c#;.net;switch statement
He is probably an old C hacker and yes, he talking out of his ass. .Net is not C++; the .Net compiler keeps on getting better and most clever hacks are counter-productive, if not today then in the next .Net version.Small functions are preferable because .Net JIT-s every function once before it is being used. So, if some cases never get hit during a LifeCycle of a program, so no cost is incurred in JIT-compiling these. Anyhow, if speed is not an issue, there should not be optimizations. Write for programmer first, for compiler second. Your co-worker will not be easily convinced, so I would prove empirically that better organized code is actually faster. I would pick one of his worst examples, rewrite them in a better way, and then make sure that your code is faster. Cherry-pick if you must. Then run it a few million times, profile and show him. That ought to teach him well.EDITBill Wagner wrote:Item 11: Understand the Attraction of Small Functions(Effective C# Second Edition) Remember that translating your C# code into machine-executable code is a two-step process. The C# compiler generates IL that gets delivered in assemblies. The JIT compiler generates machine code for each method (or group of methods, when inlining is involved), as needed. Small functions make it much easier for the JIT compiler to amortize that cost. Small functions are also more likely to be candidates for inlining. Its not just smallness: Simpler control flow matters just as much. Fewer control branches inside functions make it easier for the JIT compiler to enregister variables. Its not just good practice to write clearer code; its how you create more efficient code at runtime.EDIT2:So ... apparently a switch statement is faster and better than a bunch of if/else statements, because one comparison is logarithmic and another is linear.http://sequence-points.blogspot.com/2007/10/why-is-switch-statement-faster-than-if.htmlWell, my favorite approach to replacing a huge switch statement is with a dictionary (or sometimes even an array if I am switching on enums or small ints) that is mapping values to functions that get called in response to them. Doing so forces one to remove a lot of nasty shared spaghetti state, but that is a good thing. A large switch statement is usually a maintenance nightmare. So ... with arrays and dictionaries, the lookup will take a constant time, and there will be little extra memory wasted.I am still not convinced that the switch statement is better.