[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.