title: Why is the 'if' statement considered evil?
body: <p>I just came from <a href="http://sdtconf.com/" rel="noreferrer">Simple Design and Testing Conference</a>.  In one of the session we were talking about evil keywords in programming languages.  <a href="http://www.coreyhaines.com/" rel="noreferrer">Corey Haines</a>, who proposed the subject, was convinced that <code>if</code> statement is absolute evil.  His alternative was to create functions with <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bfcke1bz.aspx" rel="noreferrer">predicates</a>.  Can you please explain to me why <code>if</code> is evil.</p>
  
  <p>I understand that you can write very ugly code abusing <code>if</code>.  But I don't believe that it's that bad.</p>