I have a question for everyone: which way do you p...

# getting-started

[Sudarshan]

I have a question for everyone: which way do you prefer to increment a variable by 1 in Kotlin:

1. i++
2. i += 1

Reason I’m asking: Swift does not have increment or decrement operators like Kotlin and other languages. When I posted about this on social media, I got comments saying using the increment operator is confusing, which doesn’t make sense to me. What’s your opinion on this?

[Kirill Grouchnikov]

Why do you care what other languages have or don't have.

[Kirill Grouchnikov]

What is "this" that you've posted about? About "i++" being idiomatic Kotlin? And then you got a comment from some Swift developer that doesn't understand what it does?

[PHondogo]

++i

[Joffrey]

Honestly? I don't recall the last time I had to use an increment at all in Kotlin. Functional loops are far more prevalent. I would use i++ should I need to, but I almost never need it in the first place.

[Chrimaeon]

You can look for the reasons in the Swift 2.2 „release notes“. https://www.swift.org/blog/swift-2.2-new-features/
Spoiler: there they also deprecated c-style-for-loops ;-)

[Chrimaeon]

Also can you post a link to the social media post!?

[Sudarshan]

@Kirill Grouchnikov Could you please read the question one more time? I’m not caring about other languages; the thing I clearly stated is that I want to know which one you prefer using in Kotlin, and I just gave a little bit of extra context behind asking this question.

[Sudarshan]

https://www.threads.com/@heyysudarshan/post/DSc6nyNDa4g?xmt=AQF0PGD8CvpHm7e7n7b7ZbOpXy1volvlbKs_SuPSPMfIjUJK_jkCJFEI9VDqnMpy4NEepNJG&slof=1 This is the post I’m referring to. It’s not about caring about Swift, but when I posted about ++ not being available in Swift and heard people saying it’s a confusing feature, I just wanted to hear your opinion about what the Kotlin community thinks about it. It’s not about caring about another language; it’s about asking the Kotlin community what they choose.

[El Anthony]

I've known i++ since I started with C, decades ago, it couldn't be confusing for me. But it's curious I've hardly used it in Kotlin.

[Yuri Geronimus]

Use i += 1 because it’s universally readable-engineers from any background immediately understand it. It also avoids the classic C/C++ thoughts about whether ++i or i++ (and the side effects that sometimes come with that discussion).
In general, we should reduce cognitive load in code reviews and maintenance. So we prefer i += 1 when the code is meant to be read clearly and consistently.

[loke]

My project is currently at 10100 lines of code and I just counted 199 instances of ++ .

[loke]

Sorry. I missed a zeo. It's at 101000 lines of code.

[loke]

@Mohd saif Ahmed So yeah, the reaction emoji was well-placed, given the previous mistake