Comment by fragmede

> With the usual exception of "for(int i", x, and y variable inside small scopes.

But then the scope grows as the code evolves and suddenly you've got 200 lines with a bunch of single variable names. If I'm not a sadist and I rename the code before submitting the PR, but there's definitely a flow state where I've been living the code for too long and what makes total sense to me looks like line noise to others, or even future me. (I was real good at perl, back in the day.)

Point being, Arthur Whitney writes like this, even if you and I can't comprehend it, and yes it's obtuse. I wouldn't even want to work with myself if I wrote code like this, but I'm not as smart as Arthur Whitney.

As you say though, simplicity is a virtue. This is simpler for Arthur Whitney, even if it's more complicated for the rest of us.