Discussion on: I've never become overly convinced that switch statements are that much cleaner than `if else if else if else if else`

In terms of performance, it never practically matters. For sake of the argument, switch is much faster if you have a large number of cases and slightly slower with small number of cases. The compiler is aware of the number of cases and will convert the switch statement into a constant lookup time hash table once it exceeds a threshold. But once again, for 99.999% of code, the difference between the two will never be meaningful.

I personally think that they are used differently, and that using them both is actually the best option. If/Else can be used very broadly, but with switch it's pretty niche. It's essentially a jump table that's useful when you have a ton of outcomes given some input. When I see a switch, I immediately know the class of problem it's trying to solve. With if/else, it could be much broader.