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| recommended by 1 user | 2021 | 50 points by davegauer | array languages | original thread | | ||
| One user recommended this thread. What they said: |
| userbinator Aug 23, 2025 | on: Why is this hard? | context |
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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?"
IMHO "genius" is code that appears completely unintelligible at first glance, but then you examine it carefully and then feel immensely enlightened once you understand.
These are the two examples of such code that immediately come to mind:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22353532
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28491562
The original UNIX source code may come in as a distant third, a very distant third; code that is truly "genius" is indeed extremely rare.