[TUHS] Re: Clever code (was Re: Re: Stdin Redirect in Cu History/Alternatives?

Agree that clear code is preferable to complicated code. But in practice people sacrifice clarity for performance improvement all the time. Look at the kernel code of any modern os. Everybody pays lip service to this but most anything other than toy programs ends up getting needlessly complicated over time. As an example, building "Unix as a service" as user processes on top of a small microkernel could provide the same functionality using much clearer and much less code but it would be slower so we don't do it. Plan9 sort of went in that direction and it is much simpler (but that could also be because it is not hacked on so much). I do prefer clever/smart design to locally clever/smart code. For example, using Schönhage-Strassen algorithm for multiplying very large numbers. Or transforming a problem to use a much more efficient data structure or making equivalent transforms which may be more efficient to compute. Such code may not be immediately clear but with proper documentation it is not difficult + you can solve much larger problems. But agreed these come up much less often.