Apart from trivial or throwaway projects, code is read many more times than it is written. Spending time reworking some code to make it easier to read will pay

Apart from trivial or throwaway projects, code is read many more times than it is written. Spending time reworking some code to make it easier to read will pay off over the long term. (There's the question of whether making code more compact but more "clever" truly makes it easier to read, but that's a separate point.)