[claytongulick]

> I strongly prefer the explicitness

I have a rule for my teams: "Don't write clever code".

I try to constantly reinforce that we don't write code for ourselves, we write it for the next person.

We should be doing everything in our power to decrease their cognitive load.

I try to envision the person that comes after me (who may be me in months or years!) and imagine that they are having a Bad Day and they have to make changes to my code.

Good code is clear, and tells a story. A story that's easy to follow, and easy to drill into.

Not to knock elixir unfairly, but I think that's the basis of my mental block with that language. It seems to be designed from the ground up to violate that rule. Everything is elixir is clever. Very clever. Too clever for me.

[imposterr]

>I try to constantly reinforce that we don't write code for ourselves, we write it for the next person.

Heck, it does't even need to be another person. Even me 10 months from now who may have forgotten some context around some code will appreciate boring code.

[koudelka]

Can you give some examples of how elixir is too clever? It’s been a breath of explicit fresh air for me…

[claytongulick]

I know you can do these sorts of funky exercises [1] with pretty much any language, but elixir breaks my brain for some reason.

[1] https://evuez.net/posts/cursed-elixir.html

[raxxorraxor]

That is a good rule. If you want to write clever code, do some code golf. For everything else I heavily prefer explicitness. Smart software architecture hides the verbosity if you do not have business with a specific and most likely specialized piece of code.

Even with ugly code, you should think about refactoring if this particular piece did run successfully for several years and there are no security related issues.

There are several languages the violate this principle. Brainfuck is probably one of the most prominent. It is of course not to be taken seriously. Overall alleged "elegance" of some code parts is rather annoying if you really need to understand and adapt it.

[pdimitar]

Your Elixir feedback is strange. I find it very explicit. Can you give some examples what you find clever / implicit about it?

[claytongulick]

I think it's super subjective, and I'm sure it's just my mental block from 30 years of C style languages.

I have trouble with the equals sign being "pattern matching". There are other syntax things like that, where it seems like too much is being done in odd (to me) ways that are hard to grok.

I know a lot of people love it, and I really did try, but for whatever reason the syntax just doesn't work for me.

[pdimitar]

You are kind of backtracking here because I don't see anything about implicitness. I mean okay you can't get used to the syntax and you don't want to -- not something I'd deem a serious reason to drop a language but it's fair enough and it's obviously your right so cool.

But Elixir is anything but implicit. If anything, people periodically raise a stink about wanting some magic in there, and we the wider community just reject them.

[claytongulick]

Sure, people find different things complex.

For example, I can't make heads or tails of rxjs, and honestly have zero motivation to do so.

Other people see it and find it intuitive.

Shrug.