> When we observe this tendency in other (non-programming) contexts we may interpret it as laziness or short attention span. When we react this way to code we blame the code and the original programmer.
Strongly agreed. Particularly about a lot of examples of the so-called "clever code".
Programming is a profession. You can't expect to forever coast on what little knowledge landed you your first job. You're supposed to learn and improve over time. That means learning to understand more complex code, architectures and programming paradigms.
I can't read Haskell code at all. But I don't claim it's "clever" or "unreadable". I realize the code is probably fine, it's me who needs to pick up a book and learn the language.
There's rampant anti-intellectualism and (the bad kind of) laziness in programmer circles, thinly veiled as concern for efficiency ("less clever code = easier to debug", or "helps juniors contribute", as if the job of a junior wasn't - in big part - to be learning to become a senior); I find it just being penny wise, pound foolish. Lambda expressions[0], regular expressions, pattern matching, Lisp macros - this is not clever code, these are tools that can greatly reduce complexity and improve readability. They just require spending a few hours or days with a book, every now and then.
--
[0] - Yes, really; few jobs back, just after we transitioned to Java 8, I was told by my boss to maybe refrain from using lambda expressions for the sake of "more junior" people. Right, because polluting code with anonymous classes is easier on juniors than (event) -> { few lines; } in some GUI event handler.
Strongly agreed. Particularly about a lot of examples of the so-called "clever code".
Programming is a profession. You can't expect to forever coast on what little knowledge landed you your first job. You're supposed to learn and improve over time. That means learning to understand more complex code, architectures and programming paradigms.
I can't read Haskell code at all. But I don't claim it's "clever" or "unreadable". I realize the code is probably fine, it's me who needs to pick up a book and learn the language.
There's rampant anti-intellectualism and (the bad kind of) laziness in programmer circles, thinly veiled as concern for efficiency ("less clever code = easier to debug", or "helps juniors contribute", as if the job of a junior wasn't - in big part - to be learning to become a senior); I find it just being penny wise, pound foolish. Lambda expressions[0], regular expressions, pattern matching, Lisp macros - this is not clever code, these are tools that can greatly reduce complexity and improve readability. They just require spending a few hours or days with a book, every now and then.
--
[0] - Yes, really; few jobs back, just after we transitioned to Java 8, I was told by my boss to maybe refrain from using lambda expressions for the sake of "more junior" people. Right, because polluting code with anonymous classes is easier on juniors than (event) -> { few lines; } in some GUI event handler.