Cleverness

el delo

I used to use/maintain/extend an inhouse set of data acq and math libs. The @#@# who'd written them was too lazy to type meaningful variables names and in general liked compact code. The end result was tens of thousands of lines of dense, nearly indecipherable code wherein almost all the variable and function names were one or a few characters (he often started at a and went through z, then A through Z, etc), function calls with side effects nested N deep, etc, something like: z = a(bB((c ? f : gg)) * Z(c + x); /* Note the embedded side effects */ It was a mess. The guy had been promoted because the libs *did* work well, but they caused me one bad review because it took me a month or more to even begin to understand that mess of obscure code. I finally transferred out of that group, and it was only after the second person to take over that role nearly failed that management started listening to the hapless victim, by then months late and way over budget. Morons. Why is it that so many managers reward naked self-promotion and ambition, whilst often punishing the very people who are saving their bacon??? I think a big part of this is left-over from the days when C and later C++ compilers were not much more than thin layers over assemblers, and tricky programmming tricks could equate to significant perf gains. Those days are long gone and optimizers are in general far "smarter" than most programmers ever will be. There are things to avoid that trip up the optimizers, but most of those are structural and have little to do with using cute, complex, obscure, or fancy statement constructs.

Keven M

The above statement is easily parsed IN THIS CONTEXT, but if it is buried in some bit of an algorithm it can easily be missed. Also, there is a sort of elegance in simple code that cannot be duplicated by any amount of cleverness. After 24 years of this stuff I have a real appreciation for any kind of elegance and clarity. Simple code is the savior of the maintenance folks.

scoy6

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." -- Brian Kernighan

Josh Smith

sKoi wrote:

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." -- Brian Kernighan

5!

:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.

James Lonero

Oh yes, like the old C days. Cleverness was the hallmark of a good programmer. (Now its a bunch of crap.) I was one of those who liked making long macros that allowed me to a whole lot in one line. Sometimes, those macros got rather convoluted. Six months later, I couldn' remember what I was doing and cursed myself. Many cases, I would right code to spare using extra variables, often reusing the few I did declare. My functions were concise, but difficult to understand. Back in college, this was preferred, since the instructor didn't want to spend time looking at long listing. And, it was "elegant". Of course, now I prefer using as many variable that I need to describe the operations that I am doing. Same with function names. I get very verbose, sometimes with names as long as 25 characters. But it is descriptive. But not like TranslateOneTo...FortySeven(). Live and learn. Some one else or you may at a later date find yourself figuring out some old code that hasn't been modified in years. So, comment and document your code and design well.

Gerqi

Then why is there competitions for 'clever code'? such as: http://softwarecontests.intel.com/threadingchallenge/

VSpike

We used to have a project where if you logged in as a developer you got different tips of the day, which were a collection of found stuff and unix fortune gems. One that is relevant here is:- "Debugging is at least twice as hard as programming. If your code is as clever as you can possibly make it, then by definition you're not smart enough to debug it." - Brian Kernighan When I started that job I was into clever code too, but the guy I was working with had been programming a long time and soon taught me that readability and maintainability is (almost) all. As he said "'Clever' in coding terms is usual a derogatory term". He also used to say that "premature optimisation is the root of much evil" which is another lesson I needed to learn as a rookie, to avoid me spending time and adding complexity trying to pointlessly optimise some non-essential bit of code. All rookie programmers should spend some time working with a good, experienced mentor IMO. It may be painful to the ego at the time but it's good for you in the long term!

Chris Kaiser

That's actually illegal C/C++ as you aren't allowed to assign to a variable in more than one sequence point. But compiler's support it as its used so heavily.