Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you learn at school when it comes to programming is to avoid if-statements for control flow. It is error prone. If-statements are mainly used for various types of guards.
'if' is the epitome of control flow (next to looping). It's fundamental to computer programming. It's honest. Don't be ashamed of control flow, don't hide your control flow as if it didn't exist.
I'm weakly pro-if, but no, it's not. We went a lot of years without it, and some rending and gnashing accompanied its introduction.