Every now and then we get attacked for "nitpicking" or "worrying about braces" or "complaining about bad data names".
Well, there is a rather fun website "The International Obfuscated C Code Contest" that pokes fun at people who code in an incomprehensible way, by asking for examples of the very worst obscure code ... that actually does something useful.
My personal favourite is jason.c.
Once compiled on a Linux machine (it doesn't work on Arduino because it doesn't have stdin and stdout) and run, you see stuff like this:
you are in a maze of twisty little passages
caves lead: left forward right back
you see
a lamp
a scepter
> take lamp
eh?
> get lamp
done
> get scepter
done
> f
you climb...
you are in a maze of twisty little passages
caves lead: left forward right back
> f
you climb...
you are in a maze of twisty little passages
caves lead: left right back
>
Well that looks pretty good. A standard Adventure-style game. But the code?
main(){;
;;;s , ra,
n, d), && C ( j +R( s-j+t( i- 1) )
)D( W)m[ c* 4| z( j ) ]
&&_( X )E (d ( 0
)&& R( 6)/ 6
? c= 17|_ ( T )
:01,||+
, v =i & 3 ^ 2
,+j & 3&&W ( j)||y ( 10 )D (k) --
j ? k ( O[j]=R(15 ))
: 1 D
( H )o ( 7+! ! i+3 )+
i?
c=i /4 & 63,
a= 1
:0)
I'm not joking. The whole source file is like that.
For example, further down:
E (n ;char, 1 ,a,6 ,o ())* Z[
E(M [37 * 9 *3 ] ,0,L [ 99] ,3] , * *S=Z ) ;
E (*p=+1 ,char( m)[6 , co , 4 ],ol)
+,
V ( v=*O = k( j= 9 )) ;
return ! c&& - ~ ~ - -! printf
( ( "%d \n") , F (P ( 0) +6) *50 + ! ! b*
( +b - (int)time ( 0 )) )
;, ( b= 60 + time ( 0)+ 60 * 4) ;, n =Y
(u (s =Y (i) ) )
Nowhere in the source can you see anything like "you are in a maze of twisty little passages". And indeed the entire source is only 3851 bytes.
The point here is, that if someone wrote that and said "I need to change 'maze' to 'cave' - can you help me?" my first response would be: "you need to make the source readable". And with good reason.