> Many newer or more fashionable languages enable some very elegant programming styles, but this comes with a concern about the elegance of one's code, which can easily result in the programmer spending more time thinking about elegance than about functionality.
This isn't a bad tradeoff though. Elegance means generally gains in maintainability, possibly with lesser costs in the actual development. And thinking about elegance in code is the first step to writing better, more maintainable code.
> For example... should I use map or reduce here, or maybe an iterator, or... oh fuck it, I'll use a for loop. It turns out that the old-school for loop works just as well despite earning you precisely zero style points.
I usually stick with for loops because they are clear. Remember:
elegance is about simplicity and clarity. If you sacrifice either of these, you are reducing the elegance of your code.
This isn't a bad tradeoff though. Elegance means generally gains in maintainability, possibly with lesser costs in the actual development. And thinking about elegance in code is the first step to writing better, more maintainable code.
> For example... should I use map or reduce here, or maybe an iterator, or... oh fuck it, I'll use a for loop. It turns out that the old-school for loop works just as well despite earning you precisely zero style points.
I usually stick with for loops because they are clear. Remember:
elegance is about simplicity and clarity. If you sacrifice either of these, you are reducing the elegance of your code.