Be understood, not clever

It happens very often that in front of technical challenges and especially in source code, we want to do things in a fine, pretty, even “sexy” way, as some would say. This is completely normal—since code is a major part of our lives as developers, we sometimes want to show the extent of our abilities. Although this can be justified at times, it is often an awfully bad idea to want to show the complete extent of these talents. Obviously, our ego takes a hit—we must hold back sometimes. You just learned new ways of doing things, new ways of coding, and new principles of which you are ardently convinced. You have spent a weekend learning this new way of organizing your code and your project, you experience it as a revelation, and you are sure of it: you must show this new discovery to your colleagues and your team; it will revolutionize the project and bring only good things. Moreover, you will be given the credit for this new thing...