> I write very simple code because I've seen the hotshot stuff go bad, not because I don't understand the hotshot stuff. There is nothing like coming back and

> I write very simple code because I've seen the hotshot stuff go bad, not because I don't understand the hotshot stuff. There is nothing like coming back and fixing some code you wrote a year ago (or longer) on a Friday afternoon when you have a train to catch and being able to pull it off because you can actually read that code and understand how it works right away. At first I missed the twisted pride in coming up with overly clever solutions, but I can always scratch that itch in toy projects I work on in my free time. But being able to call it a day on time and not having to work late in order to figure out WTF I was thinking a year ago is priceless. And as for glory - I still have to defend a programmer who quit long ago, because I was able to dive into his Delphi code base without any prior knowledge of Delphi or any knowledge of the problem domain and make meaningful changes to that code within a few days. Okay, so I had to pepper our accountants with questions relentlessly for hours, but in the end I understood enough of what they told me to make that change. ;-)