Looks a lot like more syntax sugar to me, to hide boilerplate code. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can obfuscate the actual meaning of the code for the sake of brevity. What does A ??= B do at a glance, for example?

It's not exclusive to C# or "corporate" languages either. Rust has a fuckton of syntax sugar that makes it difficult to read.

[–] spechter@feddit.org 14 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

A ??= B

Is just

If (A == null)
{
  A = B;
}

[+] rtxn@lemmy.world -6 points 6 days ago (3 children)

And that improves readability, how? Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the Elvis operator, but chaining multiple null coalescing assignments into a one-line expression is a chore to decipher.

By the way, you forgot to return the result.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 20 points 6 days ago (1 children)

And that improves readability, how?

Because null checks are an extremely common operation to have to do, and this let's your code read as just the business logic without these constant null checks breaking things up by multiple lines.

It's only not readable to you because you're not used to them. That's the case for literally every bit of new programming syntax that comes along.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

Exactly. Not adding efficient things because "they will be new" is just silly. We adapt, as programmers. We learned the language a first time, so we know what it means to learn things. Just like in English when you come upon a word you don't understand, either you understand it by its context, or you just look it up. Simple as that.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

you forgot to return the result.

What result? The result is A being assigned a value. That's the result.

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

And that improves readability, how?

By being used to it. As many have said, if you're familiar with the syntax you have no problem parsing this.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

It's all about recognition, and we can train our brains to recognize things. 👍