By that logic, you would come to the conclusion being a good programmer means everything is a one-liner.

I sometimes get that impression from my fellow Monks; I'm as prone to golfing as the next guy. 8-)

I disagree. Multiple lines wins except in the case of repeating yourself.

My sentiment, generally, though I try to merge redundant sequential statements (multiple concatenations, rather than merely breaking a statement over several lines) and prefer ?: over a simple if involving assignments.

So I guess the line is hard to draw. Why is it okay to use ?:, but not a clever regex?