To me, elegant code shows both clarity and inspiration. It can't be a little unorthodox, but the logic must always be transparent.

I would likewise complain in a code review. Fortunately, I am not subjected to them, as I find the concept fairly insulting. I think sometimes it's better to just say "Here is how we want things to be coded" and then talk to the person if you think something can be done better. At work, I hate having to play defense -- "can't we all just get along?". I hate getting assaulted by groups of people at once, like when three people walk into your tiny cube and start looking over your shoulder. Yep, readability and standards are important -- but they can be taken too far.

But yes, one or two short line comments would do wonders in maintainablity. Proof of wizardry does nothing for me. I don't think the "elegant" example was elegant at all. I thought it was quite un-elegant. It did the job, it worked, and it wasn't horribly ugly -- but it was not elegant.

What I want to see is code that is instantly recognizable -- something that doesn't require me to stare at it for one or two minutes to understand. It's ok to require Perl knowledge to understand your code, but I'd rather see more baby-perl rather than golf-perl at work AND on CPAN.

Though, when reading all of this, don't lose the art -- the soul of programming can be lost through coding standards, "readability", and such. Look at how un-fun it can be to write Java when everyone is complaining about how you must always follow convention X-Y-Z or pattern A-B-C. There is some merit, but there is also too-much-of-a-good-thing. In this case, the near-military enforcement of some questionable policies has made the users of this language into a near parody of themselves. A fine example that "too-readable" and "too-orderly" means "way too much code to read and too much work to do". ex: Thingy.getThingy().getOtherThingy().GetDocument(EndOfRant(),EndOfRantChecker(false,true,true);

I guess all things can be overdone or underdone. Still though, back to the point, I don't think elegance has been achieved quite yet.