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Maybe That Code Isn’t “Clever”, Maybe You Aren’t!
Every few years I come across some sort of new idiotic excuse that .. well, what these sophist are really saying is “I’m too stupid to understand something, so nobody else shouldn’t be allowed to use it!” It’s really self damning. I’ve heard so many versions of it labelling actual good practices as “premature optimization” or “bad practices” that developers from 30 years ago would go “DAFUQ you say?!?”
The current hot wetness is to call simple code — so basic that I’d expect anyone past beginner level to understand — “too clever for its own good.”
I have two major problems with this:
- Maybe it’s because I’ve been programming for 45 years, but things I consider basic knowledge of C syntax languages; things I learned as a teenager; things you should have learned the first WEEK of programming; things I would expect anyone who has any business even opening their damned trap on the topic to understand; are the very things that seem to be in the crosshairs. When basic C constructs — irregardless of the child language — are “too clever” just what type of nose-breathing dunderheads are we dealing with?
- It also reeks of “beginners won’t understand it, so don’t use it” a real shart-stain of an attitude agonizingly common these days. Do you want people to stay beginners forever, because that’s…