https://www.linusakesson.net/programming/kernighans-lever/in...

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.

These matters are always problems of organization, and of prioritizing what the job is, what are the inputs/outputs, how do you efficiently parameterize them into messages and data packets, where do they go and how will you send it, etc.

This is how you wind up having tons of pointless parts and layers, because no one could understand the system from end to end.

Blind men plus elephant, vs seeing men plus elephant.