Cleverness
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Yeah, there was a time when I wrote 'clever' C++ code, but I got over myself.
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ "also I don't think "TranslateOneToTwoBillion OneHundredAndFortySevenMillion FourHundredAndEightyThreeThousand SixHundredAndFortySeven()" is a very good choice for a function name" - SpacixOne ( offering help to someone who really needed it ) ( spaces added for the benefit of people running at < 1280x1024 )
I think we all go through that phase. I agree with Josh, writing simple code that works is smart. Being 'clever' only sets you, or your successor, up for trouble. That said, I do sometimes take a perverse pleasure in properly using the -- and ++ operators, knowing full well that a rookie will spend some extra time on a particular line. :suss:
MY BLOG
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He means if you can see a way to make 5 lines work in one line of code, a simple example is int n = myInts[index++]; that's not *terribly* clever, but as a rough off the top of my head example, incrementing the index in the next line of code makes clear that you want it to increment after the operation. I know that in my early days of STL I delighted in writing code that in hindsight was far more obscure than this, on the basis that I knew how. But, you quickly realise that readable counts for more than clever, it's part of being a team player instead of trying to show off, IMO.
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ "also I don't think "TranslateOneToTwoBillion OneHundredAndFortySevenMillion FourHundredAndEightyThreeThousand SixHundredAndFortySeven()" is a very good choice for a function name" - SpacixOne ( offering help to someone who really needed it ) ( spaces added for the benefit of people running at < 1280x1024 )
Christian Graus wrote:
int n = myInts[index++];
Unfortunately, that sort of statement is in a lot of C and C++ code. I dislike embedded expressions that have side-effects. It makes the code unclear and difficult to debug.
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He means if you can see a way to make 5 lines work in one line of code, a simple example is int n = myInts[index++]; that's not *terribly* clever, but as a rough off the top of my head example, incrementing the index in the next line of code makes clear that you want it to increment after the operation. I know that in my early days of STL I delighted in writing code that in hindsight was far more obscure than this, on the basis that I knew how. But, you quickly realise that readable counts for more than clever, it's part of being a team player instead of trying to show off, IMO.
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ "also I don't think "TranslateOneToTwoBillion OneHundredAndFortySevenMillion FourHundredAndEightyThreeThousand SixHundredAndFortySeven()" is a very good choice for a function name" - SpacixOne ( offering help to someone who really needed it ) ( spaces added for the benefit of people running at < 1280x1024 )
This brings us back to the subject of functional programming. Without defining several intermediate, delegate type, functions, I can't see how even a small number diabolically nested functions can ever be readable without some sort of stack based source editor.
MY BLOG
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Josh Smith wrote:
I abhor reading code which is intentionally clever. Clever code which functions properly is garbage. If you're smart enough to write clever code which works, stop being a jerk and write smart code which works. Please.
You mean like: foo.GetType().GetProperty("Bar").SetValue(foo, "fizbin", null); when foo.bar="fizbin" would have worked just fine? Marc
I don't know if that qualifies as clever, just verbose.
MY BLOG
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I abhor reading code which is intentionally clever. Clever code which functions properly is garbage. If you're smart enough to write clever code which works, stop being a jerk and write smart code which works. Please. Clever code requires me to spend time figuring out how some pompous smart person thinks. Smart code allows me to just read it and move on. Agreed?
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
I touched on this in a recent blog[^], where I said how much I enjoyed a hard-core session of copy and paste coding, over spending too much time writing really clever, generalised code. I'm not going to be adding many more, if at all any, new web pages to the project, and all my copied and pasted, repetitive code is working now, where I'm sure the clever code I could have put out would still require more thorough testing.
MY BLOG
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I abhor reading code which is intentionally clever. Clever code which functions properly is garbage. If you're smart enough to write clever code which works, stop being a jerk and write smart code which works. Please. Clever code requires me to spend time figuring out how some pompous smart person thinks. Smart code allows me to just read it and move on. Agreed?
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
Josh Smith wrote:
abhor reading code which is intentionally clever. Clever code which functions properly is garbage. If you're smart enough to write clever code which works, stop being a jerk and write smart code which works. Please.
The cleverness should be in the solution to the problem. How you execute that solution in code should be simple and elegant.
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Josh Smith wrote:
Clever code requires me to spend time figuring out how some pompous smart person thinks. Smart code allows me to just read it and move on.
Well, I will agree mostly. I still have to hesitantly present a situation, that someone else brought up. Sometimes the non-clever way is too cpu-intensive. I have been accused of writing "clever" code, even though all I did was bring game programming techniques to sci-vis and engineering. I didn't invent anything, I sped it up by an exponent or more. Quaternions were once considered clever because it was a mathematical concept that was difficult to imagine (try imagining a 4 dimensional unit vector). But today it is normal to use for solving problems. And now people are coming to me because they somehow just discovered quaternions. :laugh: But cleverness for the sake of showing off, that programmer is no different than a pilot hotdogging. He needs to grow up. :-D
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
El Corazon wrote:
try imagining a 4 dimensional unit vector
I read somewhere once, I think in a description of multi-dimensional mathematical stuff, that understanding and applying it requires one to not try and imagine real world examples, of e.g. a tesseract, but to simply accept them as abstract entities and use them.
MY BLOG
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I abhor reading code which is intentionally clever. Clever code which functions properly is garbage. If you're smart enough to write clever code which works, stop being a jerk and write smart code which works. Please. Clever code requires me to spend time figuring out how some pompous smart person thinks. Smart code allows me to just read it and move on. Agreed?
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
I prefer clever code over cowboy code anyday :)
xacc.ide
The rule of three: "The first time you notice something that might repeat, don't generalize it. The second time the situation occurs, develop in a similar fashion -- possibly even copy/paste -- but don't generalize yet. On the third time, look to generalize the approach." -
I abhor reading code which is intentionally clever. Clever code which functions properly is garbage. If you're smart enough to write clever code which works, stop being a jerk and write smart code which works. Please. Clever code requires me to spend time figuring out how some pompous smart person thinks. Smart code allows me to just read it and move on. Agreed?
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
Amen. "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- A. Einstein And now, allow me to be a jerk:
#define Swap(x, y) (x^=y^=x^=y) -
Bah! As long as your "cleverness" is well documented, why is it bad? Maybe you can learn some new techniques or ways of thinking from someone else's cleverness. Seems to me programmers these days don't want to think, or don't have time to think. I like a good brainteaser every now and again - keeps me sharp!
- S 50 cups of coffee and you know it's on!
CP is notorious for overvaluing "clever" things. That's probably why lame one-liner posts on the forums always get 5 star votes. Clever coding isn't a technical problem; it's a personality problem.
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CataclysmicQuantums wrote:
Bit shifting instead of multiplication for instance
I remember those tricks, and they still work well from time to time. ---modified Though it is tough to beat an optimizing compiler these days.
"Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon
Paul Conrad wrote:
Though it is tough to beat an optimizing compiler these days.
And hardware optimization.
If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality. - Charlie Brooker My Blog - My Photos - ScrewTurn Wiki
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I abhor reading code which is intentionally clever. Clever code which functions properly is garbage. If you're smart enough to write clever code which works, stop being a jerk and write smart code which works. Please. Clever code requires me to spend time figuring out how some pompous smart person thinks. Smart code allows me to just read it and move on. Agreed?
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
Somebody (i cant remember who) once said.... Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. :) Guy
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I abhor reading code which is intentionally clever. Clever code which functions properly is garbage. If you're smart enough to write clever code which works, stop being a jerk and write smart code which works. Please. Clever code requires me to spend time figuring out how some pompous smart person thinks. Smart code allows me to just read it and move on. Agreed?
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
Ummmm - define 'clever code' - what your message says to me is that you don't believe you should have to think when reading code - I can't agree with that.
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I abhor reading code which is intentionally clever. Clever code which functions properly is garbage. If you're smart enough to write clever code which works, stop being a jerk and write smart code which works. Please. Clever code requires me to spend time figuring out how some pompous smart person thinks. Smart code allows me to just read it and move on. Agreed?
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
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I abhor reading code which is intentionally clever. Clever code which functions properly is garbage. If you're smart enough to write clever code which works, stop being a jerk and write smart code which works. Please. Clever code requires me to spend time figuring out how some pompous smart person thinks. Smart code allows me to just read it and move on. Agreed?
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
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Josh Smith wrote:
I abhor reading code which is intentionally clever. Clever code which functions properly is garbage. If you're smart enough to write clever code which works, stop being a jerk and write smart code which works. Please.
You mean like: foo.GetType().GetProperty("Bar").SetValue(foo, "fizbin", null); when foo.bar="fizbin" would have worked just fine? Marc
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Ummmm - define 'clever code' - what your message says to me is that you don't believe you should have to think when reading code - I can't agree with that.
Stuart Dootson wrote:
Ummmm - define 'clever code' - what your message says to me is that you don't believe you should have to think when reading code - I can't agree with that.
Clever code is unabashed geeky-ness. Code which is written for the sake of proving how smart one is, or how knowledgeable one is of abstruse features of a language. I certainly agree that reading code requires thought, but something which can be simple shouldn't require me to sit there and "figure it out." They don't pay us to prove how smart we are by creating little puzzles, they pay us to create working software on time.
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
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But that takes the fun out of it.
I'd like to take the fun out of it for the clever programmer. Along with his spleen :|.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
I don't know if that qualifies as clever, just verbose.
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Brady Kelly wrote:
I don't know if that qualifies as clever, just verbose.
Oh, if you want clever and terse, and if I knew about C# lambda and functional programming, I could probably whip somethin up that harkens back to the days of APL. Marc
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Bah! As long as your "cleverness" is well documented, why is it bad? Maybe you can learn some new techniques or ways of thinking from someone else's cleverness. Seems to me programmers these days don't want to think, or don't have time to think. I like a good brainteaser every now and again - keeps me sharp!
- S 50 cups of coffee and you know it's on!
Too Bad my coworkers are too "clever" to be bothered with documenting. There is not *one page* of documentation! And me, the new guy, is so screwed...
