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I think “too clever” often equates to “too short.” There is real intellectual pleasure in figuring out how to express an algorithm in as few lines as possible.

I think “too clever” often equates to “too short.” There is real intellectual pleasure in figuring out how to express an algorithm in as few lines as possible. I personally love doing this. And, usually, shorter code is better code. But I have seen many cases where people take this too far. People reduce their code so much that it becomes incomprehensible. (No doubt I have been guilty of this.) So to your question of what is “too clever” I would say that I would prefer 10 lines of readable code to 1 line of unreadable code.

smitty1e 5y ago
"We're not a development shop" OK, so I've inherited a Single File App with multi-screen a multi screen main() function. I can tell what it's doing at a glance, except that there is a bug report, and something may be wrong. First instinct "make the problem smaller". But how? People who put effort into avoiding effort frequently succeed in moving effort.