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Comment by schwartzworld | Hacker News Reader

This was a lot of work and you should be really proud.

One suggestion which could simplify things. I noticed this bit of code:

  var getNumberColor = function( number )
  {
      var color = 'black';
      if (number === 1)
      {
          color = 'blue';
      }
      if (number === 2)
      {
          color = 'green';
      }
      // etc        
  }

You mention using a switch statement, but why not just use an array and look it up by the index?

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And why not just return the result instead of assigning it to something you eventually return?

The argument against this is usually one return statement is preferred.

Yep, that's why I chose to implement it that way. I generally prefer single return statements. Plus my day job enforces it as part of the coding convention, so force of habit too haha.

The initial assignment is used as a base case. Returns in a conditional statement are often used as an "escape" when you want to get out of a function (e.g. null checks). This is purely a stylistic choice whereas using constant time lookup over conditional evaluation could be argued to have some performance impact (although in this case it would not be meaningful). That said, I don't see anything about this choice that needs to be defended.

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