I've been gone for a while.

Before I left, everyone openly used wait() as a condition. It was never considered bad and was actually seen as a nice way to omit a single line of code very simply. When I came back, I've been seeing a lot more people contest the idea of using wait() as a condition. Most notably, in while true do loops. Why would that be?

while wait(5) do
    print("I waited ~5 seconds")
end

--Does the same thing ^

while true do
    wait(5)
    print("I waited ~5 seconds")
end

Hack(v.) - to write or refine computer programs or code

Most people argue that doing this is a "hack" with negative connotation. All coding in ROBLOX is considered a hack by definition. Perhaps people are afraid that one day ROBLOX will "patch" this "hack" and all scripts using wait() as a condition will eventually be broken and all games using it will lag!!! But that is simply not the case either. The reason using wait() as a condition works is because things looking for conditions like if then statements and while loops only check if the statement is "truthy" meaning not false or nil. Wait() returns the time it took (in seconds) to finish yielding the rest of the script. You can test that it returns a number:

print(type(wait(3)))

number

So my question is this:

Why do some people refuse to use wait, a number, as a condition? There's a group of people against it, but at the same time, those people would be perfectly fine with a script like this:

local array = {23, nil, 42}

if array[1] then
    print("Exists")
end

but they are against using a number as a condition like so:

while wait(5) do
    print("5 seconds have passed")
end

Is it because wait() yields? Probably not, as most of these people would probably accept this:

script.Parent.Touched:Connect(function(part)
    if part.Parent:WaitForChild("Humanoid") then
        print("Humanoid exists")
    end
end) --WaitForChild was used. It will yield if humanoid does not exist

Fun fact

You can define a variable with Wait() and it will still delay your script. The only difference is your variable is now a number.

while true do
    local a = wait(5)
    print(math.floor(a+20))
end

You can use the fact that the variable is a number in pretty cool ways!

local lighting = game:GetService("Lighting")
local DayStarts = 6*60 --Time of day the game starts at from midnight

while true do
    local OneMinute = wait(0.25) --1 "ROBLOX minute" is how many irl seconds?
    DayStarts = DayStarts+OneMinute/0.25
    lighting:SetMinutesAfterMidnight(DayStarts)
end

Wait() returns 2 variables. I am unsure what the second variable means, that could be a bonus question. My theory is it returns the amount of seconds from 5 pm local time, but it could be wrong.