this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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Technology
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The fact that I dislike it that it turned out that software engineering is not a good place for self-expression or for demonstrating your power level or the beauty and depth of your intricate thought patterns through advanced constructs and structures you come up with, doesn't mean that I disagree that this is true.
The problem is that you don't realize that writing code that is difficult to maintain is in fact not a sign of intelligence, or "power level".
It depends. If it's difficult to maintain because it's some terrible careless spaghetti written by person who didn't care enough, then it's definitely not a sign of intelligence or power level. But if it's difficult to maintain because the rest of the team can't wrap their head around type-level metaprogramming or edsl you came up with, then it's a different case.
No. Both are hard to maintain. And in fact, I'd prefer the spaghetti. It can be untangled.
Exactly. Code should be self-explanatory, and anything fancy should be clearly commented.
The difference between a good and great software engineer is understanding the cost of fancy code, and when it's worth it to pay that cost. A great software engineer practices restraint, preferring code that even the most junior of engineers can maintain. Solutions should be extensible without serious refactors, and should attain good performance through good high-level design instead of low-level optimizations.
I'm guessing the "rockstar" OP is talking about went deep into the weeds of metaprogramming and even they can't explain how it works a few weeks later. We have that crap here too, and nobody likes it, especially the seniors, but it's so ingrained in the code that nobody wants to risk introducing bugs by fixing it.
Hell, not even junior devs. I need to be able to come back to code months or years later and be able to figure it out. I can only remember so much.