annoyed-onion

Yep, this. The code we write is eventually used or extended by other developers. Or, more commonly, yourself after not touching it for 6 to 12 months, by which point you’ll have forgotten all about your clever tricks. (Speaking from experience of course 😉)

All the time and I’ve been programming professionally for 10+ years.

You’ll always find a better way to do something, however, there’s nothing wrong with what you initially came up with as it’s easy enough to understand because you’ve named your variables well and your logic is easy to follow along with. I would say that is far more important than coming up with technically clever solution that may be harder for someone else to understand!