else-if-heimer's disease

[bbguimaraes]

Ok, this is driving me crazy. I was reading good old C++ faq when I came upon the phrase

The problem with this is what I call "else-if-heimer's disease" (say it fast and you'll understand).

The problem is, I don't! Probably because English is not my natural language... But I just don't get it.

So, if you could please explain it to me, you'd be ending a week of inexorable failure...

[k1net1k]

I think its a lame pun about forgetting something because of alzheimers disease

[bbguimaraes]

Wow, I was expecting it to be stupid, just not that stupid.

By the way, I forgot to mention the the original text, which is about virtual functions removing the if-else-if-else-if from code that deals with subclasses of a class. So the else-if-heimer disease is forgeting to change these parts of the code when you include a new class in the hierarchy.

Thanks.

[dandymcgee]

I have no idea, I don't get it either. Horribly bad joke..