The Core Conflict: Readability vs. Cleverness

A simple image posted to r/ProgrammerHumor, titled "howDoIExplainItBreifly," sparked a firestorm of 289 comments and 2862 upvotes. The discussion zeroed in on a timeless tension in programming. On one side is the "Explain It Briefly" philosophy: code should be simple, explicit, and easily understood by any developer (or your future self) at a glance. On the other is the "Write It Cleverly" camp, which values concise, elegant, and often dense solutions that demonstrate deep understanding of a language's features.

Why This Debate Matters More Than Ever

This isn't just academic. In an era of sprawling codebases, remote teams, and rapid developer turnover, the cost of misunderstood code is astronomical. A 2020 study by the University of Cambridge found that developers spend nearly 50% of their time comprehending existing code before they can modify it. "Brief" code that is instantly readable directly translates to faster onboarding, fewer bugs, and lower maintenance costs. The "clever" one-liner might save a few keystrokes today but cost hours of debugging tomorrow.

The Reddit thread is filled with concrete examples. One user lamented, "I spent two hours deciphering a 'clever' regex that could have been replaced by three clear `if` statements." Another countered, "A well-crafted functional chain using `map` and `filter` is more expressive and less error-prone than a verbose `for` loop with a nested `if`." The divide often falls along experience lines, with senior engineers advocating for clarity as a non-negotiable requirement for scalable systems.

The Verdict: Context is King, but Readability Reigns

So, which approach wins? The consensus from the highly engaged discussion leans heavily toward "Explain It Briefly" for production code. The clever solution has its place—in competitive programming, educational demonstrations, or personal projects where the only audience is you. However, for any code that enters a shared repository, the primary metric must be ease of understanding, not cleverness.

The most insightful comments highlighted a middle path: write the clever version to explore the problem, then refactor it into the clear version for committing. This satisfies the intellectual itch while upholding professional standards. As one highly-upvoted comment summarized: "Your job isn't to impress the compiler. It's to communicate with other humans. The compiler doesn't care how smart you look."

The Takeaway: Before you commit that elegant, dense piece of logic, ask yourself: "Will the next developer, at 2 AM during an outage, be able to explain it briefly?" If the answer is no, rewrite it. Your team—and your future self—will thank you.