title: Benefits of using the conditional ?: (ternary) operator
body: <p>What are the benefits and drawbacks of the ?: operator as opposed to the standard if-else statement. The obvious ones being:</p>
  
  <p><strong>Conditional ?: Operator</strong></p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Shorter and more concise when dealing with direct value comparisons and assignments</li>
  <li><em>Doesn't seem to be as flexible as the if/else construct</em></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p><strong>Standard If/Else</strong></p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Can be applied to more situations (such as function calls) </li>
  <li><em>Often are unnecessarily long</em></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Readability seems to vary for each depending on the statement. For a little while after first being exposed to the ?: operator, it took me some time to digest exactly how it worked. Would you recommend using it wherever possible, or sticking to if/else given that I work with many non-programmers?</p>