I feel a very important point in a project is figuring out the convention being followed.
Convention
If you find the code using
functionfoo(shouldBar){shouldBar&&bar();}
^ everywhere, then nobody cares whether it is too clever! you should stick to using the style for any commits you make. In my experience, most of these tricks are reminiscent of past, when a certain pattern was the new cool.
To give you an example of past, let's look at an example which I have seen frequently used in old projects but not used that frequently in new projects. The following code is taken from an old code base:
varbase=this.base(),i,j,k,id;
In my opinion, folks of today would rather use a new line for each definition than jamming all of them in one line.
Anti-Pattern
In some places, you will identify a clever trick which is an anti-pattern in disguise. Now, this is a tricky one, you should voice it with the maintainers of the project about the feasibility of ditching the anti-pattern in favour of something else. Now it's up to the maintainers to decide whether time invested in porting the entire code to remove the clever trick is worthwhile or not. As the common saying goes don't fix if it ain't broke
Mix of too clever and readable code
If you are in this situation, I have bad news as this is the worst case for anyone to be in. As I said consistency is pretty important for collaborating and overall health of a project. If you find the project using a mix of clever code at some places and a more readable code at some places, it becomes difficult to reason about with code. You should definitely voice it out and try to get rid of too clever code as soon as possible.
You are starting a new project
Note that the line between clever code and readable code keeps changing year after year. What you think is readable today might not be readable tomorrow for the new kid, so decide to go for whatever you and your team find readable today and please stick with it.
Refactoring is a costly affair! pick your coding style and keep it consistent and predictable.
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I feel a very important point in a project is figuring out the convention being followed.
Convention
If you find the code using
^ everywhere, then nobody cares whether it is too clever! you should stick to using the style for any commits you make. In my experience, most of these tricks are reminiscent of past, when a certain pattern was the new cool.
To give you an example of past, let's look at an example which I have seen frequently used in old projects but not used that frequently in new projects. The following code is taken from an old code base:
In my opinion, folks of today would rather use a new line for each definition than jamming all of them in one line.
Anti-Pattern
In some places, you will identify a clever trick which is an anti-pattern in disguise. Now, this is a tricky one, you should voice it with the maintainers of the project about the feasibility of ditching the anti-pattern in favour of something else. Now it's up to the maintainers to decide whether time invested in porting the entire code to remove the clever trick is worthwhile or not. As the common saying goes
don't fix if it ain't brokeMix of
too cleverandreadablecodeIf you are in this situation, I have bad news as this is the worst case for anyone to be in. As I said consistency is pretty important for collaborating and overall health of a project. If you find the project using a mix of clever code at some places and a more readable code at some places, it becomes difficult to reason about with code. You should definitely voice it out and try to get rid of
too clevercode as soon as possible.You are starting a new project
Note that the line between clever code and readable code keeps changing year after year. What you think is readable today might not be readable tomorrow for the new kid, so decide to go for whatever you and your team find readable today and please stick with it.