Keep it simple

Recently I saw pieces of code that could be simplified. I see such code often, however, recently I came across code that seemed to follow the same pattern

The patern was as in the following example:

private boolean someFlag;...public boolean isSomeFlagSet() { if (someFlag) { return true; } else { return false; }}Why not simply write:

public boolean isSomeFlagSet() { return someFlag;}It is so much simpler!

Similarly to boolean flags, there where occurencies of other object types being used and methods invoked on them in the following manner:

public String getCity() { if (address == null) { return null; } else { return address.getCity(); }}This can be also simplified (applying "change if-else to ?:" refactoring) to:

public String getCity() { return address == null ? null : address.getCity();}