Code is Not Meant to Be Clever

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Lately, I’ve been reflecting on a growing pattern across the frontend ecosystem:
A push for complexity disguised as innovation.
A tendency to worship cleverness over clarity.

And it worries me.

Clarity Over Cleverness

In serious environments — where software is expected to last, scale, and evolve — clever code ages poorly.

It might feel impressive in the moment, but months later that same cleverness becomes friction:

  • When requirements change
  • When teams grow
  • When someone else has to debug at 2AM

The best code is boring.
It’s predictable. Readable. Maintainable.

“Clever code is for the author. Clear code is for the team.”

TypeScript is Not a Contract

TypeScript helps. But it lies.

It tells you a value is a string — until the API returns null.
It says a field exists — until the database changes and nobody updates the types.

TypeScript is a developer aid, not a runtime guarantee.

Some devs push its type system to extremes.
They build complex type gymnastics that impress nobody outside their GitHub.

But in real systems, correctness doesn’t come from types.

It comes from:

  • Validating inputs at runtime
  • Enforcing rules where they actually matter — like in the database
  • Building flows that are predictable, not fragile

You don’t need wizard types.
You need solid boundaries.

Type safety is a tool. Discipline is the contract.

Abstractions Don’t Make You a Framework Author

There’s a growing culture of building wrappers, bundlers, micro-frameworks — and pitching them as “production-ready.”

But engineering isn’t about abstraction density.

It’s about:

  • Long-term maintainability
  • Upgrade paths
  • Operational trade-offs
  • Knowing when not to build something

Scaffolding a repo is easy.
Maintaining it across five years of change? That’s the real test.

Code That Lasts

Real software survives:

  • Major version upgrades
  • Team turnover
  • Changing requirements
  • Regulatory compliance

That kind of resilience doesn’t come from clever syntax or type wizardry.
It comes from boring, solid, predictable engineering.

Final Thought

Engineering is in the thinking — not the typing speed.
Code is communication. Not a performance.

If your goal is to impress future maintainers — not followers —
Write code like it’ll live longer than you expect.

Because it probably will.

CC BY-NC 4.0 2025 © Shu Ding.