Comment by gaigalas

This whole "clever code" has become a social thing.

It's one of the things people say when they don't like some piece of code, but they also can't justify it with a more in-depth explanation on why the cleverness is unecessary/counter-productive/etc.

Truth is, we need "clever code". Lots of it. Your OS and browser are full of it, and they would suck even more without that. We also need people willing to work on things that are only possible with "clever code".

From this point of view, the idea of the Lever makes sense. The quote also works for criticizing clever code, as long as we follow up with concrete justification (not being abstract about some general god-given rule). In a world where _some clever code is always required_, it makes sense that this quote should work for both scenarios.