Code Smell 06 — Too Clever Programmer

Code difficult to read. Tricky with names without semantic. Sometimes using language’s accidental complexity.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Problems

• Readability
• Maintainability
• Code Quality
• Premature Optimization

Solutions

• Refactor the code
• Use better names

Examples

• Optimized loops

Exceptions

• Code that must be optimized for low level operations.

Sample Code

Wrong

Right

Detection

Automatic detection is possible in some languages related to complexity, bad names, post increment variables.

Also Known as

• Obfuscator

Tags

• Declarative

Relations

Code Smell 20 — Premature Optimization

Programming can be fun, so can cryptography; however they should not be combined.

Kreitzberg & Shneiderman.

Software Engineering Great Quotes

This article is part of the CodeSmell Series.

How to Find the Stinky parts of your Code