re: #35 Nerdy Fish

There was an obscure C contest for many years in the industry. Some of the entries required deep knowledge of compilers and assemblers for C. And most were very short.

My officemate wrote the most elegant, concise and effective code I’ve ever seen. I used to take examples of his code and walk up and down the aisles at the office, where every person had at least a Masters in Comp Sci. The vast majority couldn’t figure it out without serious study. (Side note: his wife holds the patent for caller ID).

Of course, he also wrote at least 4 trouble reports on the compilers, all of which were fixed.

His code was amazing but we argued regularly about concise elegant code versus maintainable code.

Final note: both he and his wife were scary smart. Having said that, they build a large telecom computer in their living room from discarded parts, just for fun. And when they had to move, it wouldn’t fit through the doors.