I remember way back when, a number of colleagues being engrossed in the latest Obfuscated C++ challenge, an exercise in making code so concise, so cryptic, that even the hardened coder paled.
This always struck me as a very odd thing to want to do. Why make things more complicated than they have to be? Surely code simplicity and readability are the most important thing? After all, software only spends a small fraction of its life being created. The rest of the time it is being maintained, usually by different people who are probably not going to appreciate your obscure brilliance.
Software is much like conversation. It's not just what you say that's important, but how it's heard and understood.
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