[leftnode]

If you've ever dealt with code that Gets Things Done but is not Smart, you'll know why it's in the title. There are a million ways to skin a cat with programming, and you can pick a stupid(er) way or a smart(er) way. I'd much rather work with the person(s) who pick the smart(er) way.

The "perfect code" part of your comment above implies smartness. Dumb people don't write "perfect code".

[Luyt]

That reminds me I once came along code written like this:

  function MakePrintable(nr as Int) 
  {
    Str as string
    if nr=1 then Str="1"
    if nr=2 then Str="2"
    if nr=3 then Str="3"
    ...
    if nr=27 then Str="27"
    if nr=28 then Str="28"
    if nr=29 then Str="29"
    return Str
  }

This code worked in the program it was used in (it Got Things Done), but in a dumb way (lazy? ignorant?).

I admit this is a rather extreme example, but it provokes the universal feeling when you look at gravely suboptimal code: "What did the programmer think when he wrote this? Didn't he know that ...., it's so obvious!"

[chopsueyar]

Buffer Overflow Exploit Prevention?

[nih]

Smart people don't write perfect code either (this is obviously relative to program size and complexity), no one does :-(

[leftnode]

Sure, you're right. I'm sorry if I implied smart people write perfect code, they don't either, but I'll prefer their code.

[capstone]

I guess it depends on your definition of "done". If something is sorta slapped together in a way that is hard to read/debug or non-performant, to me that's not "done". So perhaps it's a matter of semantics.