Examining this kind of (unintentionally) obfuscated code can be a learning opportunity as well. Forgetting the intuitive meaning of symbols is often helpful in

Examining this kind of (unintentionally) obfuscated code can be a learning opportunity as well. Forgetting the intuitive meaning of symbols is often helpful in doing mathematical proofs (I think Weyl has a famous quote about that). Who knows, maybe the same is true of programming! I've been trying to train myself to to read code purely based on their form, replacing variables names by purely unsuggestive random letters and training myself to visually pattern match first elementary, then increasingly complicated patterns. Still too early to tell whether this will lead anywhere. But in some cases it definitely saved me time by removing the temptation to wonder what the original author's "thinking" was behind this or that choice of variable/function name.