🔗 Clever code is probably the worst code you could write

When I was an undergrad, Leetcode broke my brain. I would see top solutions of esoteric one-liners and wrongly think “how do I ever get this good?”

This is commonly called “code golfing”. It’s a fun hobby, but very far from “good code.”

Everybody (including those on Leetcode) knows this isn’t good code. In the industry, it’s the worst code one could write.

Okay, I admit - this is a pretty bad example of clever code, because it is so obviously bad. Here’s an example of a code snippet I came across in some old code that I found annoying:

However, on the other end of the spectrum, I realized eventually that the clearest code was actually the hardest to write.

It made sense retrospectively. Reviewing the code of a senior staff software engineer was much easier to follow and review compared to the code of an entry-level L3 engineer.