"The Clean Code Talks -- Inheritance, Polymorphism, & Testing"

I think this is actually a great example of why `if` should be "pushed up." The objective of the code is to perform an particular operation on the walrus, given a condition. The is actually ifs being instead of polymorphism and a type system. Why does the walrus have these two functions, which must be called in different scenarios? Why not have a single function, and two types, and the correct type is passed in? Even given the current structure, we could accomplish this: // There are better ways to accomplish this, depending on the language func frobnicate(walrus) { return walrus.frobnicate(); } func transmogrify(walrus) { return walrus.transmogrify(); } // Somewhere high in the code if condition { processing_function = frobnicate } else { processing_function = transmogrify } // Somewhere else in the code for walrus in walruses { processing_function() } If the decisions are made as early as possible, they do not need to be littered throughout the code. The guts of the code can run without branches, performing the same operations every time, the output only modified through the construction graph. Of course, this is not a new idea: [this video] It was old 15 years ago.