your comment about "short" vs "code golf" gets to the point of the comment you are responding to, which is one that Linus is downplaying - not all lines of code

your comment about "short" vs "code golf" gets to the point of the comment you are responding to, which is one that Linus is downplaying - not all lines of code have an equal "cost". Potentially, using a code-golf implementation where you're using pointer-to-pointer to get rid of a single, easily understandable "special case", is more "expensive" in coder-time than just using the standard off-the-shelf linked-list that (even Linus admits) everyone knows from their data structures 110 class. Because now every developer who ever reads that bit of code for years into the future, now has to understand your code-golf solution, how it works, why it was done, and the implications for the rest of the code. Whereas they could probably skim the "standard" solution and say "yes, that is a standard linked list" and move on to solving the actual problem instead of trying to understand the code golf. In many cases: your clever solution isn't solving a difficult enough problem that it's worth the cleverness, because cleverness is often expensive. edit: I agree elsewhere that this is probably a question of "vocabulary" and whether a particular bit is "clever" or "code golf" depends on your particular team.