[stdbrouw]

I was talking with a social scientist recently who (reluctantly) had to write code in order to run certain statistical analyses. Her solution, to keep code understandable, was to make sure everything could be read as a linear script, in the literal meaning of that word. No functions other than those that come with the language, because that means you have to refer back to earlier code to see what on earth is happening. No loops, because you don't visually see how often something is being repeated.

Sure, you have to draw the line somewhere, but refusing to use Python/CoffeeScript comprehensions because not every language has them, or preferring to use your own utility function for removing doubles from an array instead of underscore.js's _.uniq to me feels like optimizing not for the average programmer but for the mentally challenged.

Sometimes you do get to have your cake and eat it too: simple one-liners instead of confusing and verbose line noise.