Comment by qayxc

> It does if any of his customers ever care about maintaining the kind of code after his death.

Which is why there's annotated and reformatted versions of the code. There's basically a "clean" version for those who care about such things and his "development"-version, which looks like executable line noise to the uninitiated.

> This could mean he’s much smarter than the rest of us, or he could just be a jerk doing his own thing.

Or - and I know this is difficult to comprehend these days - he cultivated this style over decades and it's just easier for HIM to work with code like this. No teams, no code reviews, no systems upon systems that need to interact. Just a single page program that does one thing and that he (the only contributor and his own boss) is able to understand and work with because that's what he did for past 50 years.

> In either case I’ve never had a good experience working with coders who are this “clever”.

Neither have I and I wouldn't write code like that either. I also don't think that reading and understanding such code makes you "smarter".

It's more of a peek into a different era of software development and one particular person's preferences.

Still it's amusing how Whitney's style seems to personally offend people. It's just a different way of programming that works for this one guy due to very specific circumstances. Neither the OP nor Whitney himself advocate for emulating this style.