[ravenstine]

I wouldn't object so much to "complex" because there may be a much simpler way to writing my code. What I don't like about "clever" is that it's always a shit-sandwich that comes off as misrepresenting my intentions. I never write code with the intent of impressing myself or anyone else; my only interest is in writing minimal code that is maintainable and as easy to understand as possible. If my code doesn't achieve that, just tell me without patting me on the head by telling me I was trying to be clever.

[theshrike79]

It's the focus on "minimal" that sometimes gets called "clever".

Some that I've found in actual code

Using ternary operators everywhere instead of if-else just because it's a few characters less, mixing them in the middle of already complex function calls so that it takes a less clever coder hours to untangle when there's an issue.

Creating your own classes for storage, the best of which was a custom from-scratch implementation of a Vector, but it kept the 3 largest items in the first three cells. It was 100% API compatible with Vector and no part of the API gave any hint of the weird sorting mechanic.

Fluent APIs. Just don't. They look pretty when written, but are a complete horror show to debug.

[mostlylurks]

> Using ternary operators everywhere instead of if-else just because it's a few characters less

This isn't a fair assumption to make. One good reason to prefer ternaries over if-elses in languages which lack if-else expressions (and only have if-else statements) is that ternaries guarantee that you'll get a value for each branch, and with static typing you'll even know what type that value will be, whereas each branch of an if-else tree might do anything, is usually forced to rely on mutation to accomplish its job, and has no statically enforced guarantee of producing the value that you want.

The fact that ternaries are terser is irrelevant. Some modern languages, like rust, have avoided copying this awkward if-else-ternary dichotomy by providing if-else expressions, which is the perfect solution to this particular situation.

I am also honestly a bit concerned over how many developers consider ternaries hard to read. They're one of the most basic constructs of most of the popular languages out there, not some advanced corner case where it might be understandable to struggle with them.

[BigJono]

They probably consider them hard to read because people overdo it with multiple nested layers of them when they don't need to, and tools like prettier often format them in completely moronic ways that obfuscate the original dev's intention.

[techbuttman]

I agree with you and am reminded of "KISS" (keep it simple, stupid): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle