I wish I could read the article but it got the hug of death, so I'm basing this on your comment: I agree with you -- that's why I think clean code is less impo

I wish I could read the article but it got the hug of death, so I'm basing this on your comment: I agree with you -- that's why I think clean code is less important than clear boundaries. All that messy code for matrix multiplication poses a lot less risk for consumers of it when the API is clear. eg. Pass in a 2D array of integers, receive an integer in return. That's pretty obvious for me to say, I think, but you run into situations where an app, for some reason or another (the main culprit IMO being Not-invented-here-syndrome), couples code like these matrix calculations to constructs unique to the codebase (objects, database structure). That's when it turns to hell.