Agree. The goal ought to be to make code more understanble rather than more terse. This short example reads fine either way, but when an expert coder puts this

Agree. The goal ought to be to make code more understanble rather than more terse. This short example reads fine either way, but when an expert coder puts this subtle trick in a pile of code noise the replacement developer that has to fix that code months later curses every line of it.