As engineers, it can be really satisfying for us to implement clever, terse solutions to problems, relying on advanced tricks and techniques. As a result, we often write code that is hostile and inaccessible to the junior folks on our team. This article makes the case that we should strive to write simple, accessible code, using the dumb old primitives that everyone knows.
The real cleverness lies in being able to write code that seems self evident in hindsight. Anybody can write convoluted code that’s impossible read after, but it’s a lot harder to express the problem using simple and clear code. The ability to understand a complex problem then express it using clean and maintainable code is what separates junior developers from senior ones.