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It seems I may be in the minority, but I don't find that (or predicates in general) unreadable.
/ravi
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As others have said, it might give you "nerd points", but IMO it is the C# equivalent of APL one-liners - easy to write, impossible to debug or understand 6 months down the line.
Under some circumstances, this coding style may produce faster code, but that remains to be measured.
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: impossible to debug or understand 6 months down the line.
I'd have to disagree with that - I've got LINQ code going back eight years which is still perfectly understandable. It tends to be easier to read than the equivalent imperative code, especially if you try to squeeze all of the filtering, grouping, sorting and projecting code into one method to try to make it go faster.
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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harold aptroot wrote: Is this style cancer?
Not in my opinion.
So what you'd have is (a bit cleaned up and assumptions made):
foreach(var stuff in someStuff)
{
if (stuff.c != "What")
{
Hell(stuff.d + "The");
}
}
harold aptroot wrote: Side question, why is this style popular?
I think, given the above example, the answer to that is obvious. But if you want it enumerated (hardeeharhar):
1) Easier to understand the logic
2) Simpler code
harold aptroot wrote: I file this firmly under "stupid one-liner 'clever' code with no benefits to compensate".
Sure, it can be abused, but for me, the Linq statement is so much more readable and understandable, in a very short order of time, than the longer format.
Consider also some order advantages:
someStuff.Where(c => c != What).Select(d => d + The).OrderByDescending(q => q.CreateDate).Foreach(e => Hell(e));
What a PITA to have to create yet another list to reverse the order, and if you're abstaining from Linq altogether, you'd probably have to call a method to re-order the list on the desired field. More kruft, more complexity, more things to go wrong, more hard to understand imperative code.
Furthermore, if you need to change the order, the above "long" code example breaks, because now you have to create a separate list of the filtered items so you can then sort that -- I assume you wouldn't want to sort the unfiltered list!
So, add another item to the reason the "style cancer" is better:
3) more maintainable
The style cancer, as you call it, is very much like functional programming, where each function results in an output that you pipe to the next function as its input. It's a much much cleaner style.
Marc
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Exactly, well put 
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/ravi
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Ok OrderByDescending is convenient and having to retroactively put in sorting into normal code is annoying. That doesn't sell it for me. It's still "codegolfing but with longer method names" to me.
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harold aptroot wrote: "codegolfing"
Strange thing there, Harold; last Sunday's crossword puzzle had, as its long-tail-quote, something former US Prez Gerald Ford supposedly said:
"I am not getting better playing golf because I hit fewer spectators"
Have you ever looked at the XML the WCF serializer generates: object-name prefixes and suffixes can total twenty characters and more. It has become my habit to write long descriptive names in code, even though I am a solo act; part of that is because I want any students who may see the code to encounter such long mnemonic names ... and, partly because I am a speed touch typist, so the perceived "cost" of typing longer names is minimal ... and, of course, ReSharper and the VS editor make name completion a snaparoo.
cheers, Bill
«There is a spectrum, from "clearly desirable behaviour," to "possibly dodgy behavior that still makes some sense," to "clearly undesirable behavior." We try to make the latter into warnings or, better, errors. But stuff that is in the middle category you don’t want to restrict unless there is a clear way to work around it.» Eric Lippert, May 14, 2008
modified 17-Jul-16 12:47pm.
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harold aptroot wrote: t's still "codegolfing but with longer method names" to me.
Well, if readability, simplicity, maintainability, and a more functional programming syntax style don't sell you, then I don't know what will. 
And an FP style is often times better because those "long method names" are descriptive of what is happening, rather than having to look at code to figure out what is happened.
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: readability, simplicity, maintainability,
These might have sold it to me if they were true. They're true for you, but not for me.
The functional syntax I see as detrimental.
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Having scored technical interview questions/tests before, I can tell you now, that developers that don't know-and-use linq, are the bottom of the barrel...
In one of the threads of this discussion performance is talked about, and while true that raw performance of a for/foreach for basic enumeration is marginally better, and has less overhead, you'll find that linq performs scores faster for more complex enumerations.
It basically comes down to devs not really understanding how they are putting code together, and linq is a great way to build up an enumerator before actually executing it. It is simply plain wrong to say linq doesn't perform as well, because not only did the succinct linq answers perform better than the code of the senior devs that were taking those tests, but we ran benchmarks, and the memory footprint was minimal in comparison, and every time a linq expression was used, the unit test covering the question passed, whereas it was closer to 20% for devs not writing linq (there was time pressure on the tests - I am sure the number would have crept up had there been more time, but it also shows that linq was faster to write a solution with).
Whether you think it is less readable, less simple or less maintainable is truly your opinion, but it sounds as though you, and others posting in this discussion, actually need to do some research on linq, because it shows a lack of understanding of the other benefits too.
Yes, it can be abused, but in the right hands it can produce some fantastic results.
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I have to admit that I hate the more sql form of LINQ and find it extremely unreadable even though I am pretty comfortable with SQL. As far as debugging, I have to agree that it is much harder to debug, but it is also true that a long equation is harder to debug than breaking it up into pieces. I have had times in the past when I was having difficulty with a LINQ statement and did break it up, just like on an equation that was giving me problems. However, generally, I find that my LINQ statements are a lot more reliable than when I try to do the same thing without LINQ. I am of course talking about the simple case that you have. Personally I find the LINQ statement clearer then the foreach statement and the if statements. Also, I like to be able to see as much flow of the class and method as I can when looking at them on the screen, so I prefer much more compact code, but that is probably because I am more the type that wants to see the forest, and not focus on the trees. I can understand the complexity concern on more complex LINQ statements, but in order to reproduce the same thing, like the capability of joins, I would need a lot of code, and much easier to introduce errors.
In other words I like LINQ, and to me it is where programming languages are going. It provides an awful lot of power, and saves a lot of programming. If we took your approach to the extreme we would still be using assembly language. After all is in not easier to debug
b = 6
a = b / 2
c = b * a + 4
Would you also advocate getting rid of SQL. SQL is horrible to debug, and I think worse than using extension methods, but you are basically advocating the elimination of SQL. It is also extremely difficult to understand. I have worked with some SQL that goes on for pages, it was miserable.
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Nope, I love that style of programming.
It's SO much more readable than a foreach/for/while loop.
It becomes immediately clear what the code does.
There's some collection than we need to filter, transform and process whereas a loop is just a loop and might do all those things, but you won't know until you read through the loop, probably with a lot more code to keep the new lists and counters. I've found a lot more unreadable loops than LINQ queries. I have no idea why you'd find it unreadable, it reads almost like natural language... 
Anyway, that style is necessary for LINQ to SQL/Entities (because loops can't build expression trees, convert that to SQL and be lazy evaluated). And if I had to choose between LINQ or plain old SQL I'd choose LINQ wherever possible.
Only the .ForEach() is an odd one. It's defined on List<t> and not as a LINQ extension method because ForEach, by definition, has side-effects and LINQ was designed keeping the functional paradigm in mind. I never use it.
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Sander Rossel wrote: I have no idea why you'd find it unreadable, it reads almost like natural language..
I think the problem is it's the wrong language for me. I don't think in terms of filters and transformations but this style forces me to.
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I do think that way, but your style forces me not to. From now on I'll consider for loops a cancer
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Sander Rossel wrote: It becomes immediately clear what the code does.
I think this is the important part. You focus on what the code does, without caring how this is done. As long as it does what it promises (which is the case with LINQ - usually) you're fine.
So you're abstracting away how you would (for example) filter the collection.
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Yeah, and the how becomes so much more easier to read when you know what it is supposed to be doing in the first place
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harold aptroot wrote: Is this style cancer?
No, next question.
harold aptroot wrote: why is this style popular?
Because it's superior to the other style. (I'm not talking about runtime performance here)
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harold aptroot wrote: Is this style cancer?
Absolutely!
A page full of IF...GOTO statements looks far more organised!
You don't even need ELSEs, or any of that indentation that makes the page a mess!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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When I started programming, "some" years ago, people where complaining about the performance of Object Oriented Programming (I won't speak of assembly vs. "high-level" language).
A "few" years later, when .NET arrived, the same was said regarding the use of the Framework compared to native code.
Nothing changes…
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I didn't even mention performance, but sure, it aint great.
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The "idea" isn't bad per say ... just that it tends to be taken too far.
Personally I try to keep such Linq chains down ... at most two dots in such a call (at least that being a quick-n-dirty rule-of-thumb). Especially as a normal for/foreach tends to be more efficient too, your sample is quite litterally performing 3 loops where one for loop would have sufficed.
The only time I feel such long chain of Linq extension methods make sense is if using the Linq SQL syntax instead. Though it's still not very efficient, actually less so than the pseudo FP style.
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irneb wrote: your sample is quite litterally performing 3 loops where one for loop would have sufficed.
you should really take a look on what the compiler does when it enconters the yield keyword, you might be surprised to find out it's not as inefficient as you think.
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Sentenryu wrote: you should really take a look on what the compiler does when it enconters the yield keyword
Not even slightly sure what you mean by that ???
Here's a test: BenchLinqLoops[^]
The chain of Linq statements clearly perform 3 loops (one of which is unnecessary). Yield doesn't "magically" fix that. And to show by how much such Linq chains (and even the Linq-to-SQL version) adds extra overhead - look at the performance of that yield function.
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And just to make doubly sure no JIT optimizations skew the benchmark - I added an extra loop before starting the stopwatch, and rearranged the orders:
BenchLinqLoops[^]
Now you actually see the SQL variant's "extra" overhead - i.e. being translated into (effectively) the LinqAddXToEven2Loops function before it runs.
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