Learn you some pattern matching for great good!

Elayne Juten is a Software Engineer at Cars.com. She is passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion in tech as well as finding ways to help build developer confidence.

Move if to the bottom of your toolbox. Have you ever looked at a function with numerous conditionals buried within and thought, “there has to be a better way”? Well, there is! It’s pattern matching!

This talk will focus on the basics of pattern matching, both how it works and why we might want to use it to simplify our code structure.

First, we will walk through an example of a simple pattern match and take a look at how these concepts can be applied in a larger codebase.

Then we will refactor by taking a look at a function that utilizes multiple conditionals and walk through how to implement pattern matching in a step-by-step process. We’ll also discuss why refactoring to pattern matching can improve codebases.

Lastly, we’ll discuss the pros and cons of utilizing pattern matching in different situations you might see in a large codebase. By the end of this talk, you’ll have added pattern matching to your toolbox to wield with confidence.