Guard clauses and single exit point

Developers are often told to have a single exit point in functions but in my opinion this just makes things more difficult than they have to be.

Instead of having a single exit point I prefer to use guard clauses in most of the functions I write, using the single exit point paradigm only when dealing with resources that have to be manually closed (having a single exit point makes resource handling easier and less prone to error if you don't have something like a finally block to help you).

As a matter of fact, I prefer to use what I call "return early" paradigm, that is, return as soon as the job is done (guard clauses are a specific case of this). That avoids nested conditionals and makes the code simpler and easier to read.

Example

Using nested conditional to have a single exit point:

 String ret = null;
 if (isGreen && isRound && smellsCitric){
   ret = getLime();
 } else {
   if (isGreen && isRound){
     ret = getGreenBall();
   } else {
     if (isGreen && smellsCitric){
       ret = getCitricSoap();
     } else {
       if (isRound && smellsCitric){
         ret = getOrange();
       } else {
         if (isGreen){
           ret = getGreenColor();
         } else {
           ret = getUnknown();
         }
       }
     }
   }
 }

 return ret;

Using the return early paradigm:

 if (isGreen && isRound && smellsCitric){
   return getLime();
 }
 if (isGreen && isRound){
   return getGreenBall();
 }
 if (isGreen && smellsCitric){
   return getCitricSoap();
 }
 if (isRound && smellsCitric){
   return getOrange();
 }
 if (isGreen){
   return getGreenColor();
 } 

 return getUnknown();