Comment by gregmac

> "Have I made the code shorter?" is a much easier question to answer than "Have I made the code easier to understand, modify and maintain?"

This is something that comes with experience though, and I think a lot of people don't truly grok this until they are trying to maintain their own terse/clever code written months/years earlier. Nothing is quite as humbling as doing `git blame` on some crappy code only to see your own name there.