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by greydius 3752 days ago
I am sympathetic to the author's argument. Programmers should strive to write understandable code. However, I think you should also assume that people reading your code are fluent in the language and its idioms. You wouldn't expect a novelist to write books at a first grade reading level just to appease people that haven't put forth the effort to learn the language beyond just the basics.
1 comments

Yes! I was scrolling down looking for this.

Long long ago when I encountered the string copy idiom in C 'while (s++ = t++)' for the first time, it left me scratching my head for a bit. Then it becomes a part of your vocabulary.

Native idioms make communication better.

People often misunderstand 'basic' for 'simple'.