"The best engineers I've worked with know a ridiculous amount of these kinds of "tricks"--that's a big part of what makes them the best." Nah, no way. I work w

"The best engineers I've worked with know a ridiculous amount of these kinds of "tricks"--that's a big part of what makes them the best." Nah, no way. I work with some great engineers and they do not do "tricks" in their code. You write clean code that works within known conventions and patterns, so that it has long term maintainability. If you need "tricks" like this, then you're probably neck deep is some trash code looking for hail-marys to save you from yourself by causing side effects that you desire in the short term.