Comment by nine_k

My rule is simple, grug style: "smart good, clever bad".

Terminally clever is when you look at code that does something impressive and say: "Oh snap, I still can't exactly get it. I've read five explanations, and still cannot understand why they are doing this here. Screwed magic. How do people even come up with such ideas?"

Genius is when you look at code that does something impressive and say: "Holy guacamole, it's so simple! Now that I see it, it looks almost obvious. Pure magic. How do people even come up with such ideas?"

Despite the superficial similarity, clever and smart can be told apart. Clever should be seen as late stage optimization, smart, as foundation.