📏 Less code is not the ultimate goal

Less code is not the ultimate goal

Consider the following byte to binary C program:

int main(int b,char**i){long long n=B,a=I^n,r=(a/b&a)>>4,y=atoi(*++i),_=(((a^n/b)*(y>>T)|
y>>S)&r)|(a^r);printf("%.8s\n",(char*)&_);}

Unless you are trying to win the International Obfuscated C Code Contest, this is not good code. In spite of what I've said before, less code is not always better. The highest goal is readable maintainable code. Sometimes we have to write more code to have readable code. An example is aligning the happy path.

Less code is more about not implementing unneeded features, cleaning up dead code, refactoring to simplify and eliminate duplicated code, etc. The goal of less code should never sacrifice readability or maintainability.